Procrastination

We can’t talk about learning without talking about procrastination.

What is procrastination.

Well it’s this right it’s this idea of putting off something because you don’t feel like doing it right

now.

And this is something that a lot of us battle with.

As a matter of fact everybody battles with procrastination.

It’s always easier to do the easy things and the easy things usually don’t require a lot of effort which

involves learning.

But why are some people better of procrastination than others.

Is that something that can be fixed.

Is that something that can be trained.

And yes it is.

You see when you learn something new it activates an area of the brain associated with pain something

with negativity.

Your brain actually triggers negativity and we don’t want to do something that we don’t enjoy doing

right.

That’s what procrastination is.

Emotionally we get this.

I don’t want to do this feeling this negative feeling and your brain immediately tries to switch off

and tries to put your attention into something positive.

That’s why you don’t want to do something you don’t want to do something because it’s not going to feel

good.

So why not just go on Instagram.

Why not just go on Facebook or watch YouTube videos.

That gives you that sudden jolt of feeling good.

And that’s what this recent study discovered is that procrastination is an issue with managing our emotion

and not our time.

The task that we’re actually putting off are being put off because it makes us feel bad because it’s

boring or maybe it’s too difficult and we just want to do something that makes us feel good or maybe

we’re just worried about failing to make ourselves feel better in the moment.

We start doing something else like going on YouTube.

So how do we get rid of procrastination.

Is there a trick.

Well research has found that in order to get rid of procrastination you just need to take the initiative

and start doing the task well.

That’s the worst advice ever right because you just told me that procrastination sucks but you can fix

it by just doing something that you’re procrastinating on.

That’s not very good advice is it.

Well unfortunately with procrastination there’s no easy tricks at the end of the day to get rid of procrastination.

You need to do the task that you need to do.

But what you can help with that is that realizing that Instagram or YouTube is a short term positive

thing.

The pain you feel at the beginning when you start a task will actually make you feel better in the long

term.

So you need to realize that you’re making a sacrifice of short term positivity versus long term positivity.

It’s delayed gratification.

Another interesting study was done by Case Western Reserve University in Ohio and they did an interesting

study.

They first prompted people to feel bad by getting them to read a sad story and then they got people

to do a puzzle.

They had one group that read the sad story before they did the puzzle and another group that didn’t

read any sad stories.

What they discovered is that the people who read the sad stories first were more likely to procrastinate

than those that didn’t.

Why is that.

Because they were looking for something positive to change their negative emotions.

Remember when we talked about the happiness factors in the principal section of the course you need

to be happy if you want to avoid procrastination because procrastination is that avoidance of negative

feeling.

But if other parts of your life are happy if you feel positive then it’s a lot easier to overcome the

procrastination because you don’t have so much negativity.

So that’s what procrastination is the way you avoid procrastination is just being in a good mood and

knowing that initially it’s not going to feel good.

You need to realize that procrastinating to achieve a short term positive thing is at the cost of a

long term goal.

So next time you’re tempted to procrastinate you simply just say what’s the next action.

What’s the simplest step that I can take to take on this tax.

All you need to do is to get started because as soon as you get started what scientists discovered is

that the negative feeling tends to go away fairly quickly.

So getting started is everything in order to avoid procrastination.

Make it as easy as possible for you to start and that’s something we’ll get into the technique section

for now.

Don’t pause this video.

Don’t go on YouTube.

Don’t go on Instagram.

I’ll see you in the next video.

Bye bye.