Hello!
Today I want to talk about something which I have been suffering from for a while – Procrastination.
What is procrastination?
It is something we need to do and we put off intentionally.
It could be exercising or reading or losing weight (or writing this article)…we think we want to, we plan for it and yet somehow…we put it off.
Does that happen to you?
There have been very many things I have put off. From creating my business website, to returning calls, to sending out proposals…I ended up doing the task only when I knew I had a deadline to meet.
Of course, there is an obvious negative impact of procrastination (eg. I postponed doing yoga for such a long time that it took its toll on my back and I gained weight in a year.
I kept telling myself that I could always do it tomorrow!). Yet somehow, there was always something else to do that caused postponement, delays…
There is also a positive when procrastinating – for example when there is a conflict, it better not to react or act immediately.
I started wondering what I could do to reduce my procrastination. And I found a fantastic book by James Clear called ‘Atomic Habits’. In this book, the author says that if we can just make small improvements even by 1% on a daily basis, we will show a 37 times improvement at the end of 1 year.
In a nutshell, its all about creating and adopting better habits.
He talks about how we can change our habits by marginally changing the way we see ourselves. It was a new way of looking at improvement for me because he said -“Focus on who you wish to become.”
So if I take the example of exercise, there is no point saying ‘I need to lose weight so I should do yoga’. I need to look inward and think of myself as a healthy, pain-free person and that’s what will help me go for a yoga class.
“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement”.
James Clear has designed 4 laws of behaviour change. The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying.
A great example for us Laja women is the gentle push Riddhi gives us to post online regularly about our businesses- that’s a marginal change we are making every week when we post and eventually it becomes a habit that will have compound interest so to speak!
Do comment below so we can learn from your successes on how to develop better habits.
After all – “Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.”
To start off, I’m running a small poll
What kind of procrastinator are you? Just read the statements and choose the one that resonates most with you. Try to choose 1 at most. And if there is something not listed here, do add it.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1FhQZW-FCJT96LJ3ZVlvDQAZizgYEVJ7FKf8rEs-bXz0/
