Procrastination; How are you dealing with it in 2022?

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Procrastination is nothing new. The ancient Greek philosophers even had a word for it; Akrasia. Meaning to act against our better judgement by doing one thing even when we know we should be doing something else.

Despite it being known since ancient times, it is still very rampant today because we live in a time full of distractions.
I myself find it hard to do even the things I find most fulfilling sometimes, like training my chess or working on a school project.

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When I joined Hive, I had the intention of writing as many articles as possible. But after the 1st few post I kept on pushing writing one. I kept coming up with these sneaky reasons(lets just call them what they are:excuses) to not do the things I'm meant to do at the time I'm meant to do them.
& I'm pretty sure alot of us can relate with this, sometimes we put away the things that are important to us even when we know it could lead to pain in the end.
It's 2022 already, we have set our goals for the year. Some have began work towards achieving those goals, some others are chilling with the impression that there're still 364 days left, lol, that's how procrastination begins.


This article wasn't supposed to be about Procrastination, but as I sat in the feeling & kept experiencing the urge to write later & do something else now, I thought hell, this could be one of my major issue so why not research on ways to mitigate it, I did some research & decided afterwards to write about it & share with y'all ways that can help mitigate it.

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In a 2013 study by Dr Tim pychyl who is an expert is the research field of procrastination defined Procrastination as

The primacy of short term mood repair over the long term pursuit of action

In other words procrastination is the act of being focused on the immediate urgency of managing negative moods & pushing a problem away rather than getting on with the task to solve the problem at that present moment

Qus: So, what causes one to procrastinate?
Ans: Resistance.

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Steven Pressfiled in his book The war of art defines Resistance as

A universal force that has one sole mission; to keep things the way they are, preventing action,creativity & progress.

Crossing this resistance line defeats procrastination. That is to say the issue is in starting & not necessarily in doing the thing itself.
This resistance comes as a result of 2 things though, either:

• The task is too boring
• or too difficult

Qus: With all that in mind, how do we fight procrastination?

1.Break things into Chunks

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Sometimes the picture in our minds is like; it's a big mountain we want to climb or it's a giant monster we want to slay & that makes the task seem difficult.
The best way to go about it is to break the task into smaller bit.
Like for example, instead of putting in my to-do list: Make a Hive post, I'll instead write

• Search for inspiration
• Research on topic
• make a draft
• Edit Post

That breaks the idea of making a hive post into smaller chunks, in turn reducing the amount of resistance I'd feel in order to start the task.

2. The 2 minutes rule:

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The 2 minutes rule is simple. If you find yourself procrastinating from doing something you know you have to do, just tell yourself you'd do it for just 5mins.

With this, we're trying to trick our brain to believe we're going to do the task for just a little amount of time.
Like when I was procrastinating writing an article, I told myself; just write for 5mins but here I'm 30+mins in still writing 😂.
Truly the problem is in getting started not in continuing the work.

3. Be kind to yourself

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Studies in self-compassion revealed that when you're hard on yourself for something you didn't do, it doesn't help you be more motivated to do it the next time. But showing yourself compassion & self love helps alot!

So dear Hivers, make that move, do that thing you ought to do. If it seems overwhelming, break it down into chunks & learn to apply the 2min rule & even if you fall short, never fail to have compassion for yourself. With that, I'm pretty sure we all can get things we want done this year.