I know I’m a few days late on the whole September thing but this is a procrastination post. I saw this challenge on Zen Habits, one of my favorite blogs. The whole idea is to take this month to develop a habit of not procrastinating, and who couldn’t use that?
The whole idea of the unprocrastination challenge is to be completely productive for just 5 minutes every single day. To do this you need to recognize the urge to do something else and sit there with it until is dissolves.
I’ve been incredibly anxious the past week so I will be using my 5 minutes every single day to do a guided mediation with the Calm app. I’ve talked about this app so many times but I really think that it helps me. I’ve been doing 1 minute meditations most nights before I fall asleep the past few weeks and using that time to stretch. Believe it or not 1 minute a day actually showed improvement in my flexibility, who knew?
The reason for just 5 minutes is to watch the urge to switch tasks and let it go. It will build up the ability to focus and be able to deal with the urge to switch without actually switching tasks.
Zen Habits has a lot of posts on procrastination and one point I found interesting other than sitting with the urge to change tasks was finding a deeper motivation. A huge reason that we procrastinate things like reading or exercise is because we don’t have a deep enough motivation. So the key is to find some deep motivation. Set goals, figure out why it’s important to do these tasks and keep that in mind! For example, I’m starting to read the Harry Potter series, that’s 7 books. I have the first three and the last book right now. I started to read the first book but didn’t have much motivation to not text my friends while reading or even to just pick up the book sometimes. So I bought the 3 books I didn’t own, that adds the motivation of getting to the 4th, 5th, and 6th books because I paid for them with my hard earned money. I want to be a part of more communities online, so I want to finish this series as soon as possible so I can start feeling more a part of the Harry Potter fan community, there’s more motivation. Lastly, I want to read enough that I feel well read and smart. Adding 7 books to my “read list” really ups that feeling, yet another motivation.
For exercise, I can procrastinate for months but when I finally do it I am perfectly happy actually doing it. I need a deeper motivation that just saying that I should work out. I want my legs to be stronger because when I run they feel like they’re going to snap, another motivation. I want my heart to be stronger, my resting heart rate is much higher than anyone else my size and it’s not very healthy, another bit of motivation. I want a Kylie Jenner booty (I do not have the body type for a Kim KW booty), there’s more motivation.
The trick is to dissect each and every task and find the importance, find what makes it meaningful to you. Find what makes you tick and go with it.
Now that I’m all motivated from writing this post, I’m off to write a few more and also read some more of those Kick Butt articles on Zen Habits.