PhD tips: overcoming procrastination

in my last video i talked about how to set more realistic deadlines and how to meet them but it's not just about meeting your goals over a long term basis or for several weeks or months or years but also about meeting your goals on a daily basis now what will often happen or where this goes wrong is you will set a to-do list you'll write down all the important things that you know you need to do today and then you look at the first item on that list and you feel some kind of resistance now you might not be able to put it into words but there is some kind of internal force which is kind of dragging you away from that goal that you've written down and then what happens is after you get that initial feeling of resistance or anxiety your brain will create all kinds of justifications for why you don't need to do that thing now so it will say ah it's okay let's just check email and we can do it after or we'll do it after lunch or we can put it off till tomorrow or i need to tidy my desk before i start to work or i need to vacuum behind the sofa or something ridiculous and very often we will follow through on these things we will tidy the desk because that relieves some of that inner tension it gives us a way out it makes us feel a little bit more comfortable at least in the short term so it gives us kind of a reward what that does is it ingrains this habit when you have a stressful situation and then you find a solution that reduces that stress the brain learns okay this is a way out of that stressful situation and then that is what it will constantly try to do so it's not just the repetition of that particular action or decision but it's the repetition of that cycle of kind of stress and relief that really reinforces this in your brain at a neurological level so even though there are no immediate negative consequences to putting something off till tomorrow we are ingraining that habit that that is how we respond to a little bit of anxiety or resistance and also of course we're stealing time from tomorrow which means that the things that we would have done we no longer have time for that and of course that accumulates over time and you can end up months or years behind or you might end up just never actually finishing as a result of this habit which starts on such a small scale so it is incredibly important it might even be the most important thing to break that habit of delaying what you plan to do and to follow through with a lot less hesitation and not taking so seriously these excuses that we create for ourselves and not backing out at the first sign of resistance so how do we break that habit now we don't necessarily expect to be able to overcome this habit immediately so the way we can do it is one decision at a time so if you take your to-do list and look at simply the first thing which is on that list and put a star next to it to indicate its importance and then what you have to do is sit with it and not do anything else until that thing is done so you'll feel all kinds of discomfort you will feel all kinds of resistance you will come up with a million excuses but just repeat to yourself it's okay i'm going to stay with this until i get this done now of course when you do this when you start attempting that task there may be things which genuinely make it impossible to complete that task today things which are outside of your control but what you have to do is do everything in your power everything within your control to achieve that task and then if you find it is genuinely impossible then you can delay it knowing that you've done everything that you can you can put it off until tomorrow or you can put it off until whatever missing thing is available to you but you have to stay with that task until you've done everything in your power to achieve it and often you'll find that the task wasn't as scary as you expected and it feels good to have overcome your fears it feels good to actually engage with the problem and done your best to solve it and then because you've got that little bit of good feeling you can move on to the next thing i said okay last thing wasn't that bad let's try the same with this one and you'll probably feel there's a little bit less resistance or you might find that your brain comes up with an excuse and you're a little bit faster to say no i'm not going to check email i'm going to follow through on this thing you can start to build a little bit of momentum now you can do this again and again and again and again that habit will keep trying to come back but what you've got to do is recognize those moments of decision those forks in the road where you're deciding to put something off or to follow through and if you follow through consistently then what you're doing is you're meeting your commitments to yourself and what that will do is you'll start to develop confidence because you trust yourself to follow through on those commitments you can tell yourself no when i set a target i get it done you've got that backed up by experience but if you put things off then every time you write a to-do list in the future you don't really trust that you're going to actually do it so it is incredibly important as i said to sit with the resistance the first time is the probably the most difficult time but then start to build that habit of following through now you might be asking yourself the question how do i know when i set this goal when i put this first thing on my to-do list and i say i'm going to follow through how do i know that is the best course of action how do i know that that's the right decision well the best way to find that out is by actually doing it if you give it your best shot and it doesn't work for some reason then that is giving you feedback that okay maybe this wasn't the right way to approach this but i can now adjust based on that experience if you just sit and worry about it then that cycle will never actually end so the only way out of that cycle is to plow through the resistance give it your best shot and see what happens so i hope you find that useful please do leave a comment below to let me know how it goes if there are things that are coming up that cause a specific type of resistance that you can't overcome please do share that story and i'll do my best to help out if you like this video please do subscribe and hit the notification bell so you know when new videos come out and also if you give it a thumbs up that helps other people to find it and helps with the kind of youtube rankings if you don't like this video um don't just give it a thumbs down leave a comment let me know why because that's useful feedback to help improve also if you'd like more tips check out my website jamesaytonphd.com where i've got hundreds of blog posts on all things phd and also if you'd like more detailed guidance check out the phd academy i'll put a link in the description below where we have in-depth courses we have weekly zoom calls with me we've also got writing groups and very active community forum so you don't have to struggle through all of these things alone so check out the link below that's it for me best of luck and i'll see you next time

Channel: James Hayton PhD

Views: 3,083

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Id: FrCpeu8xHSo

Length: 7min 54sec (474 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021