If you procrastinate then you’ll most probably agree that it makes you feel tired and guilty.

When you resist something, the resistance uses up more energy than completing the task and feelings of guilt and unworthiness lower your overall effectiveness, which means you use even less of your total brainpower.

Here’s a technique you might like to try to break the old patterns of procrastination:
Write down where you are, exactly what you want to do, and how you want to feel when it’s complete.

Doing this is using an NLP technique known as Timeline. It is like putting yourself with your task on a timeline of here and now and what it will be like to have completed the task in the near future.

The process of writing it out on a timeline forces the creative part of your brain to look at the here and now and what will have to have happened for it to be complete and then what you will feel like.

To procrastinate is to wallow in feelings of guilt and more than likely bring up old negative memories and examples of shortcomings, or worry about what’s going to go wrong.

Procrastination’s insidious. If you’re procrastinating, you’ll find any number of super-logical reasons NOT to do the task. You’ll suddenly remember those phone calls you have to make. Or that you haven’t called your mother all week, or that the kitchen floor suddenly needs cleaning.

Let’s imagine a scenario. Let’s say you’re procrastinating on cutting the lawn. The grass is almost to your knees and you’re imagining that neighbours are so aghast that they turn away when they see you.

Now take out a pen and paper and write down where you are, what you want to do, and how you want to feel while you’re doing it and then how you’ll feel when it’s done

You’ll find that as you’re writing, the other parts of your brain will start to kick in. As you write: “It’s Tuesday, almost 4pm, and I’m sitting in the kitchen having a cup of tea. I want to go and check
the lawn-mower, and cut the grass. It will only take me half an hour, and I’ll feel energetic and pleased with myself while I’m doing it. The lawn will look great.”

Cutting the grass is a simple enough task, and once you’ve written it down, chances are that you’ll march right out and do it, because the unconscious resistance you have to the task just melted away.

Try it.

Once you’ve done this a few times on not so important tasks and noticed and felt the difference you will then start to automatically do it for bigger and more important tasks.

Let me know how you get on.