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Neil Fiore - The now Habit - Coggle Diagram
Neil Fiore - The now Habit
What is procrastination?
Procrastination isn't innate (we aren't born lazy)
It's a learned habit in school, workplace and at home
Procrastination is a strategy to avoid fear of failure
We procrastinate with work that is not part of your objective
When procrastination happens?
When you want to do a good job of something so you can live up others and your expectations.
You find the work dull. It's no fun getting started or continuing to work.
When it's unclear what qualifies as a good job. You don't know how to live up to expectations. What is good? What is good enough?
A strategic program for overcoming procrastination and enjoying guilt free play
We're taught to dislike work and fear failure.
You're not born lazy or lacking in drive.
Anything less than the very best creates unrealistic expectations.
Our self esteem is linked to work and procrastination helps protect it.
We learn that we're only worth something if we work hard and achieve big things.
Unrealistically high expectations and uncertainty of our success brings us to procrastinating.
Adopt the anti-procrastination mantra: "You only learn when you fail"
One of the key ingredients of procrastination is perfectionism.
In the face of our expectation to perform perfectly, we lock up and instead of working we start procrastinating.
We need a way to stop worrying about our failure.
The perfect way is not the only way. He who never fails never learns.
Change your self talk from "I must" to "When can I start?! :D"
Phrases like "I must..." "I have to.." or "I should.." which all implicitly mean "I don't want to" creates a tugging war within yourself that splits you into 2 parts pulling in opposite directions. Making you indecisive and more likely to procrastinate. Not only that, it creates immense mental and emotional stress.
Solution is to change the way you talk to yourself and about your goals. "I want to.." "I decided to..." "I will..." "When can I start..." energetically.
To be productive integrate relaxation and play in your everyday life.
Plan your play time if you want to become a high performing producer.
If you want to make a task less threatening break it down into smaller units.
Hardest part about work is getting started.
Try unscheduling
Primary objective is to get many short uninterrupted periods of fully focused work each day. Instead of many hours half-asleep and full of distractions.
Many short focused units help you have shorter work day and help you get more done and have more free time.
Take a task from a list of important things you want to get done.
Spend 30 minutes working with absolute focus.
After each 30 minutes you book the unit into your book of working hours accounts.
At the same time you compile a list of enjoyable things you want to do in your week.
Unlike a normal work planner, you schedule the enjoyable things instead of the work units. Your life is not just work.
Only book working time if you've gotten 30 minutes of uninterrupted focused work first.
To fight off distractions always have a notebook in reach
Whatever the reason, when you're working and there's a distraction (ideas, remembered you wanted to do something, or w/e) just note down what it is and revisit it later.