STOP WAITING, START DOING!
By: Albert Lonardo
Why is it so hard to reach our dreams? Why is it so hard to stay productive? Why is it so hard to preserver to our time schedule? Imagine this, we need to study for tomorrow exam, but it seems to be a greatest chore to just get off the bed, prepare our study tools, and finally study. Not only that, it is also hard to not let our eyes give in to the temptation of smartphone. Because of that, I will present to you 2 tips and tricks to stop waiting, start doing, and fight procrastination.
It is easy to dream but hard to start doing it, isn’t that right? Stephen King says that the scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better. By that, the first effective trick that I use to tackle the procrastination urge is to put your money as a risk. “What! Why is that?” I can imagine you guys asking this but let me explain first. Believe it or not, we human are driven by 2 things: pain and pleasure. That’s why when we are sick, we really urged to go to the doctor or to consume medicine quickly to relieve our pain. So if you don’t have the urge to start doing what you dream, put your money as a risk. For example, sign for a cooking course if you dream to become a chef. That way you will think twice about the money you lost if you skip a course.
Before we get to the second tricks, I will show you what happening in my minds while I was procrastinating.
“Procrastination is very nice, right?”, my left mind said.
My right mind replied “No! It sucks to procrastinate, get up and do your task!”
That kinds of conversation happens so often while I was in my bed watching youtube that I became so stressed, don’t you guys feel the same? The reason why our minds being like that is because subconsciously, we find the task too overwhelming for us. The trick is to break it down to a smaller parts, then focus on one parts at the time. Break it down even further until you think that “Geez, this is so easy that I might as well just do it now”, if you still procrastinate.
Steven Pressfield ever quotes, “It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write”. The key to start is just start, don’t wait until you feel ready, don’t prepare and just begin. It will get easier as you start, believe it!
Reference
Chua, C., 2020, ‘How to Stop Procrastinating: 11 Practical Ways for Procrastinators’, in lifehack.org, viewed 18 February 2020, from https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/11-practical-ways-to-stop-procrastination.html
Cohn, D., 2019, ‘How to Get Started (When It’s Really Hard)’, in thecreativityhabit.com, viewed 17 February 2020, from https://thecreativityhabit.com/how-to-get-started/
Netzley, A., 2019, ‘7 Simple Steps to Get Started Doing Anything’, in yoprowealth.com, viewed 17 February 2020, from https://yoprowealth.com/7-simple-steps-to-get-started/