It’s ironic that I’ve spent the last thirty minutes finding excuses to not work on this post. I’ve had to get some water, turn on a fan, check my email one last time, take off my shoes and on and on before I felt like I’d be ready to start writing. This is clearly my mind playing worthless games. Not only would having water or turning on a fan not help me be more productive, for those thirty minutes it actually hindered productivity. But I finally came to my senses and realized exactly what was happening and now I’m sitting here with a paragraph down feeling better and more focused than ever.

Truth be told, you’ll never overcome procrastination. You’ll have good days and you’ll have bad days. If you want to be a freelancer or a blogger or finally attain that location independent status, first you need to learn to minimize procrastination so you can work toward things that matter, things that directly relate to your goals. The best way to minimize procrastination is to be more aware and to recognize it when it creeps up on you.

Being Aware of Your Procrastination

I’ve recently learned exactly what it feels like to procrastinate. My head throbs. I get an absolute information overload and spend a considerable amount of time cycling through the same four or five sites. It might be similar for you.

Usually when you procrastinate you’ll feel it deep down. In the pit of your stomach or the back of your mind there will be a nagging little voice telling you that something needs to be done and it will keep you very uncomfortable until you either write it down in some kind of todo list or actually do it.

The video I’ve posted above is a great example of what procrastination looks like for most people. Procrastination loves to disguise itself as productivity. This typically means you’ll be doing very necessary things that would have had to be done anyway and this may be efficient, but it’s by no means effective. To live the life you want, you have to do those tasks which will get you there. Buying groceries or cleaning your desk or washing dishes likely won’t get you anywhere.

The best way to stay aware of what you are doing is to leave yourself a note somewhere near your computer monitor or workspace asking yourself if what you are doing at that moment actually matters or if you are inventing things to avoid what’s important. If you have constant reminders, you’ll be more likely to stay on track.

If you’re like me you’ll probably forget to check your note or just ignore it after a while. There are two ways to deal with this that I’ve been experimenting with. The first is setting my homepage to www.stickyscreen.org. StickyScreen is very simple. It just displays a single sticky note-esque yellow square. On it you can write whatever you want. Mine currently says “Are you focusing on the important?” Each time I try to sneak away from my work and open a browser, that’s what I see. It’s done a pretty effective job of keeping me on task.

Second, if you use Mac OS X you also have the option of setting up an Apple script that will interrupt you every twenty minutes with a dialog box that reminds you to do what’s important. To set up this script, go to Spotlight and search for Script Editor. Once Script Editor is open, paste the following: set delayTime to 60 * 20

repeat

display dialog "I hope you are doing what actually matters. Continue?" buttons {"Yes", "No"} default button 1 if the button returned of the result is "Yes" then delay delayTime else exit repeat end if

end repeat Save the file wherever and as whatever you’d like to call it. Whenever you’d like the script to run, just double click it like you would an application and it will open in Script Editor. Click the green “Run” button.

What To Do When You’re Procrastinating

After you’ve realized you’re procrastinating there is one immediate step to take that will always get you working. Whatever it is you have to do, commit to working on it for just five minutes and set a reward for when you are finished. That’s all it takes. Just five minutes. You’ll feel less intimidated by the project if you know you’ll only be working on it for five minutes and knowing that you’ll get some kind of reward at the end is enough motivation to get started.

Once you do get started, though, there’s a good chance you’ll stick with it way past the five minute minimum. Getting Things Started is much more important than Getting Things Done in my experience. Usually if you just get them started, finishing it will be a breeze.

That’s what procrastination is after all — to delay starting a task.

Conclusion

Before you can live the life you want, before you can be a freelancer or a blogger or an entrepreneur, you have to become self-determined and self-motivated. Some people are born with this naturally, but I do believe that they are skills that are easy enough to develop. I’ve had to develop them myself. The number one killer of self-determination and self-motivation is procrastination.

Learn to overcome that and you can conquer the world.

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