2 Rules to Stop Procrastinating

Scenario: "Dude, I procrastinate because I don't feel like doing it. I just don't. Yay!" Dude, you're procrastinating because you fear your imperfections.

  1. You fear your work will suck.
  2. You fear Sally will laugh at your work.
  3. You fear Jim won't respond to you.
  4. You fear you'll fail, miserably.

Fear drives us to procrastinate by viciously trapping us from taking action. It's as if we're silently voicing to ourselves: "I don't want to do Bobby's project, because I fear that I'll do a bad job." Says procrastination expert Dr. Neil Fiore: "The main reason people procrastinate is fear. They get overwhelmed and they're afraid they'll look stupid." The solution? We give you two rules:

Rule ^1: You embrace your suckiness.

Sometime, somewhere, in some twisted development of the modern human mindset, we saw imperfection as a bad thing. "Hey, if it's not perfect, it's not good enough!" most of the world would scream. But, that portion of the world misses something: Without incessant failures, we wouldn't discover Einstein's formula, Edison's light bulb, Walton's supercenter, the Wright Brothers' aircraft, or Ford's democratized vehicle. Failure has defined those who have kicked the most ass in this freakin' world. It defined the greatest thinkers, the greatest historians, the greatest economists, the greatest entrepreneurs, the greatest chefs, the greatest Nobel Laureates, the greatest anything. Failure's juicy good because it steers us toward the correct route. Peep this analogy: Imagine that you've suddenly lost your vision, you're in your kitchen, and you're trying to make it to your bedroom. The best way to get there: By using the walls/objects/tables/etc. that you'll hit (a.k.a. "failures") as guides toward your destination. It's akin to working on your business projects: you won't know the perfect route to get to your destination, but you'll use failures/imperfections as guideposts to construct the destination's route. When you embrace your suckiness, you drive yourself to do something -- anything.

Rule ^2: You are a badass. You don't need to do anything. You choose to do it.

Going back to your childhood days: Remember when your parents, teachers, guardians, bus drives, and whoever else would tell you: "Yo. You have to: _______. Then, you have to: _______. Then..." How did the "have-to's" make you feel? Probably reluctant, and you wanted to rebel: which you likely did by half-@ssing the job. According to Fiore, using the "I-have-to's," drives your mind to subconsciously "confirm the impression that the task is awful and painful -- one you wouldn't do if you had the free choice." Instead, when you replace the "I-have-to's" with the "I-choose-to's," you empower your mind to become fully assertive and open to kicking ass.

Chillax.

Entrepreneurs have enormous dreams. Yet, most become too scared of being imperfect to do something about those dreams. Don't let a perfectionist attitude prevent you from doing whatever it is that you want to do: the universe's biggest visionaries were some of its biggest failures. That is, you want to be "imperfect" if you want to do kick ass. So when you're out building your empire, just remember: "I'm a badass that chooses to do: ________________. My several suckinesses will then pave my road to rock the world."

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Posted on October 30

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