Life’s Become Too Easy, And We’ve Forgotten How To Be Disciplined.
This week, I’m going to get brutally honest.
I get countless questions on how to manage procrastination, and I have spent a long time looking at what procrastination is and diving deep into why we procrastinate and what can we do about it.
Usually, I am diplomatic when answering these questions. I don’t intend to upset anybody, and I want to encourage them. But that approach doesn’t work in the long term — it doesn’t address the underlying problem. Sometimes, the painful truth has to be dished out.
One thing you learn about procrastination when you study it, is that it is the near opposite of self-discipline — being distracted by something instead of doing what we should do. The opposite of which (discipline) is not allowing ourselvesto be distracted and doing what we know we should do.
We don’t do what we should do because we don’t have the discipline to do what we should do.
Self-discipline is like a muscle; if you do not exercise it regularly, it will weaken. Our lifestyles of ease and convenience have only exasperated the problem. We watch another episode of the TV series simply because we do not have to move. Autoplay on our streaming services ensures our self-discipline is never exercised.
It now takes a lot of discipline to get up and do the washing up when we had to get up and go to the TV to turn it off or change the channel in years gone by.
I recently discovered one of my former English students leaves his apartment in the morning to go to work by stepping into the elevator and going down to the underground car park, where, after a ten-metre walk, he gets into his automatic car and drives to the office underground car park, where he walks a further ten metres to the elevator and his office.
From the moment he woke up and got to his desk in his office, he has walked no more than thirty metres.
This convenient, easy life is causing so much ill-health today. There is no incentive to exercise any self-discipline, which ultimately leaves us with weakened defences against procrastination.
If you want to end procrastination, you need to exercise your self-discipline every day. As Admiral McRaven said in his speech at Texas University in 2014, start the day by making your bed.
Exercising your self-discipline is about doing the little things. For example, after waking up, do some stretches, some push-ups or take a cold shower. Just do something that makes you feel uncomfortable. Doing the little things you want to avoid doing but know it is good for you exercises your self-discipline.
The next item on the list of causes of procrastination is a lack of direction. You don’t know where you are going or what the goal for the day is. It’s like you get stuck on the Easy Street Ring Road, going round and round doing all the easy stuff because you have no meaningful plan for the day.
Stuff like checking your email but not doing anything with it. Waiting for the next instruction from your boss or customer, so you can go off and do that instead of proactively doing the hard, meaningful work that reduces the risk of bosses or customers asking you to do things for them.
When you know what you want out of the day, you will not procrastinate.
When you start each day with a clear plan of action, you no longer procrastinate. For example, you may start the day with the objective to get thirty minutes of exercise, complete a presentation file ready for tomorrow’s meeting, and clear your actionable email before the end of the day. Having those three objectives for the day will push you to make sure you do your objectives. There’s still time to deal with unexpected emergencies, but you get back to your plan for the day once they are dealt with. No procrastination.
You want to avoid loading yourself with more than three objectives for the day. That’s too many. You don’t have to do everything today. It’s when you start to believe everything has to be done today; you start procrastinating because you’ve not applied a disciplined approach to prioritisation.
It’s the little things, like making sure you never close out the day without a plan for the next day. Doing a weekly planning session every week so you are clear about what you want to accomplish the following week and making sure you are tracking your goals and doing something each day or week that moves you towards achieving those goals. That is what will put an end to your procrastination once and for all.
Daily exercise for your self-discipline and planning for your immediate and long-term future is not difficult, but it requires self-discipline. It takes discipline to push through when you are not in the mood. It takes discipline to go out for your daily walk when it’s wet and windy. But the pay-off in terms of your self-respect is immeasurable.
Each day, you have to choose your pain. The pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The pain of regret is far worse in the long term. It damages your health, wealth, and happiness. It destroys your self-esteem and leaves you looking for external excuses when you know that the cause was your lack of self-discipline.
Don’t let the poison of regret destroy your dreams and goals. Instead, build up your self-discipline strength by exercising it each day. Do your exercise and your daily and weekly planning, and never allow excuses to stop you from accomplishing your objectives for the day.
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