I hope you’re finding ways to indulge lavishly in the summer season.
This is the first in a series that focuses on the most common blocks I see in clients, starting with procrastination.
If you’re a procrastinator, you’ve probably tried a million things to address this pesky issue. Here are the novel ideas I’ve seen work lately in clients —
1) Take more breaks. A common root of procrastination is fatigue. Many people try to be as productive as possible, but that can backfire. Instead of trying to focus for hours, try taking 5- to 20-minute, screen-free breaks. Go for a quick walk, stare out the window, dance to a song, tidy something, or do some exercise.
2) Schedule your week on Sunday or Monday. Look at the week ahead, decide what’s most important to get done, then book time to do it. At the end of each day, write your list for the next day. These steps reduce day-to-day overwhelm, which is another common root of procrastination.
3) Do the inner work on imposter syndrome. I love Alyssa Nobriga’s parts work meditation for this. If you’re avoiding a task because it evokes fear of rejection, failure, or ‘getting it wrong’, take some time to soothe that fear and see if it affects your motivation.
4) Eat and sleep well. So basic, I know! But also so hard. If your energy is depleted, of course you’re going to procrastinate. Consider focusing on getting better sleep for a month or cleaning up your diet. You might be shocked by what a higher baseline of energy feels like.
5) Override the resistance. Your brain will tell you 10/10 times that you should not do the thing you’ve been avoiding, but it’s just trying to keep you safe. For example, my brain will tell me: “just do those dishes later, you need to focus right now”, “you can work-out this afternoon”, “you don’t really need to do that-it’s a fake schedule block”, and the list goes on. Experiment with overriding these thoughts for a week, and see how you feel.
I hope that helps! If you’ve found a miraculous hack for procrastination, please share it with me.
Love Kit
