- Here are six things that cured my procrastination. And I know for a fact it'll do the same for you if you do them, but you might just procrastinate it. Number one, literally just don't do the thing that you're avoiding.
You see, for a lot of people, procrastination isn't just some cute little quirk of theirs. It's an actual lifestyle. They are chronic procrastinators.
All they do is procrastinate. Their entire existence is entrenched in this feeling that what they're doing is not as important as some other thing that they should be doing. They live their entire life with an internal conflict.
Yeah, I'm on my phone, I'm browsing Instagram reels, I'm on TikTok, but I really should be doing this important thing. This isn't good, but I'm still doing it. Let me ask you something.
What's the end result of that mindset? Well, the end result is you're doing the bad thing instead of the good thing. So, it doesn't really matter how you feel about not doing the good thing, right?
If the end result is that you're goofing off anyways, then what's the point of having internal conflict about not being productive? All that's doing is adding oxidative stress and tension to your life, which is a bad feeling that you're gonna wanna escape from. (grunts) (Joey and companion laughing) You're like a ball of cortisol escaping from the feeling of escaping.
It's a pattern. If you want to break the pattern, you gotta do something different. And what I recommend is just commit, fully commit to doing the thing that's not particularly good for you.
Give it a try. See what happens when you break the pattern. Instead of casually (beep) ing around, why not play ranked?
And what I find genuinely helpful, you might think I'm insane, is actually writing an anti-to-do list. Write down in detail all the things you want to do instead of doing the thing that you should do. Do you have a habit of checking Reddit?
You know, going on your phone, checking on some TikToks? Write it down. Write down your plan to not do your work.
What subreddits do you want to visit? And for how long? What do you hope to find there?
How long do you want to go on TikTok? And what kind of videos do you hope to find? By being a professional about goofing off, what you'll find is that you're bringing awareness to the things that you're doing.
You convert escaping from this compulsion that you barely know that you're doing to a conscious activity that you planned and thought out. And what always ends up happening to me is about 10 to 15 minutes into consciously escaping, I go, you know what? I am in the driver's seat of my own life.
I am wearing the pants in my own brain and I can just do what I want to do. I often find that what I want to do is be productive. I just needed to flip a switch inside of my brain that reminded me that I have control over my own actions.
Number two, the two-minute rule. Now that you've reentered the driver's seat inside of your own brain, then you might actually want to start being productive. Well, the two-minute rule is a fantastic way to do that because it leverages momentum.
So, basically, the two-minute rule is super simple. Basically, most people have not just one thing they need to do, but an ever-growing list of to-dos that are, that's crushing them psychologically. But the two-minute rule is basically surveying the list of things you have to do and asking yourself, will this task take two-minutes or less?
And if so, just do that one. It might not be the absolute best use of your time, it might just be vaguely productive. But if procrastination has been a lifestyle and ongoing pattern to you, then you don't really have the luxury to ponder the great mysteries of life and figure out what the very best use of your time is.
Because the norm for you is wasting your time completely. So, anything productive is a huge upgrade. You want to develop new patterns, new default behaviors, and get yourself used to the feeling that, oh, being vaguely productive is very pleasant, right?
This actually feels constructive and good, and I'm experiencing pleasant brain chemicals like serotonin and endocannabinoids, and not just dopamine, that make the whole thing feel worthwhile, right? Your phone is basically just dopamine. You're used to that feeling already.
Making some progress and gaining traction in your life feels good on a completely different level. The rewards feel longer lasting. So, yeah, do a little stupid (beep) Forget the two-minute rule.
Just do the one second rule. Picking up the three mugs next to your PC battle station and bringing it into the dishwasher, it's not gonna change your life, but it'll get the ball rolling in a little tiny way that will give you momentum to snowball into bigger and better things. Number three, the sins of yesterday.
Okay, so I can't make a how to cure your procrastination video in good faith without talking about the sins that you commit against your own body in the darkness of your bedroom. No, that's not what I'm talking about. People will watch a video like this, looking for a cute little tip and trick to get them to stop procrastinating, but the real issue is that their body is in a constant state of inflammation, oxidative stress, they're running on five hours of sleep.
They ate three McDoubles and a junior chicken for lunch. They blast their brain with dopamine and blue light for two hours straight before they go to sleep and 45 minutes straight as soon as they wake up. They are nerfing themselves through their lifestyle, and then they look up little tips and tricks on how to stop procrastinating so much.
Here's a little experiment. Tonight, try as hard as you can to get between seven and nine hours of deep restful sleep where you didn't go on your phone for an hour before you went to sleep. And if you did, you went into the settings app and turn on the red light filter that I've talked about in previous videos.
And in the morning, you don't go on your phone at all. You don't go on TikTok, you don't go on YouTube shorts. You start your morning off low-key.
For breakfast, you eat something with protein and fat, maybe a few carbs, but nothing crazy. Eggs are a fantastic choice. (pan sizzling) (egg thuds and breaks) Oh my gosh.
And tomorrow, let me know how you feel. Let me know throughout the day how your brain fog is. Do you have a little bit more energy?
I can pretty much guarantee you that you'll procrastinate a lot less on days where you did this to yourself versus days where you've been abusing yourself in the dark. You've heard it a billion times, sleep, diet, and exercise. You hear it so often, it's almost nauseating.
And the thing is, you don't need to nail all three. You really don't. I always think of it sort of like a Venn diagram.
If you pay attention to one or two, you can kind of lack in the other one. Like if you get fantastic sleep and you get like a medium diet, you only need to get a little bit of exercise. I know plenty of people who have an impeccable diet, they exercise like a madman, but they only get like six hours of sleep at night, and they're still high performers.
I also know a lot of people who don't get a ton of exercise, but their sleep is on point and their diet is on point, and they're still super high performing. The only one I would not drop below a certain threshold is sleep. I would not recommend getting less than six hours of sleep.
You really should aim for like eight hours of sleep. And I have a whole video on the difference that that makes in my life personally. Do a decent job of all three categories and you will procrastinate way less than you do now.
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Click the link below, join the pre-order, and thanks again to Nootrify, AKA myself, for sponsoring this video. Okay, so I call this one the 15-minute suffer window. One thing that I've noticed in my life is that pretty much any task becomes a lot easier if you can make it past the first 15 minutes.
Even really, really boring stuff like doing your taxes. Doing taxes is obviously one of the least fun things you can possibly do in life. But another really boring thing you might find is like computer programming or debugging a website, writing a stupid email you have to write for an application for funding or a scholarship, or just something that's kind of brutal to have to do, but you have to do it.
It doesn't matter what it is. I always find that it's the first 15 minutes that sucks, and after that, you're kind of in a flow state, you're used to doing the thing, you've kind of relaxed a little bit, and now all of a sudden, the thing is way easier. So, one of the things that really helps me is I just set a timer for 15 minutes, and I tell myself, I don't have to do this thing for very long.
I just have to do 15 minutes of it. And when you chunk it down in your brain like this, it feels a lot simpler. You're like, all right, I'll just do it for 15 minutes.
But the thing is, once you're doing it for 15 minutes, you don't wanna stop, you know? I think subconsciously, you know that it's hard for you to sit down and do the work, so you try to milk it a little bit, which is great. Tip number five, the garbage version.
This tip, I genuinely use more than any other tip on this list. And that is to just say, I'm gonna do the garbage version, right? Even when filming this video, I really wanted to sound smart and be like, oh, you know, I can't do this video until I have all the right words I wanna say, and I sound super smart.
No one cares. What do I want to sound smart for? I'm not very smart.
It's way better that I actually just make the damn video and talk to you guys and do the garbage version of this video. Like I already know what I want to say, and I do these strategies all the time. So, I might as well just fire from the hip and talk to you guys about it and have a conversation, do the garbage version of this video, and then edit it later, because I find editing fun.
(key clacks) Do I? - Do I? Do I?
- And make it into something that's a little bit more fun to watch, right? Because once you feel like there's no stress, there's no bar you need to hit, you take the bar, which is your standards, and you put it on the floor, then all of a sudden, anything is possible. Everything is a win.
If you've been procrastinating writing an essay, just write the garbage version of that essay. You're not writing an essay anyways. Writing a (beep) essay is better than writing no essay.
So, anytime you're putting something off and you're feeling like, "Oh, this has gotta be perfect, I gotta sound smart," do the garbage version. Do you never ask girls out even though you're single, and that's something that you'd want to do? You don't have to do a good job, just do the garbage version.
Absolutely botch it, but still do it. Same thing with making videos. If you wanna start making videos, go make a bunch of terrible videos.
In fact, you have no choice but to make terrible videos if you haven't made videos. It's not gonna be good. So, don't worry about it.
Go make a bunch of (beep) videos until you're good at it. Okay, number six, "The Sims" view. So, I don't know if you guys have ever played "The Sims" video game, but I've played a healthy amount of it a few years back.
And it's weird because I don't think it's supposed to be an inspiring game, but I always find it incredibly inspiring when I play it. And my usual play style is I usually lock my guy in a box with nothing but a toilet and a computer, and I just make him get good at writing books. And he does that day in and day out, and he's my little mini-me, a slave, a slave to productivity, and the man.
He writes so many books that he becomes a master author, a "New York Times" bestseller. He starts making millions of dollars. And when he's done mastering books, I give him a little reward, I'll give him a little couch, and then he can master guitar.
And then, you see his guitar skill going up the more he plays guitar. I think the reason I find it inspiring is because I think life works very similarly. There are various uses of your time in life.
If you zoom out, view your life as if you're playing "The Sims" and you yourself as a little "Sims" character, then you realize that, yeah, there are a bunch of different things you can do. And the more you do certain things, the more you increase that skill. And some skills, when you increase them, it leads to more opportunities, more money, more relationships.
And when you spend time developing other skills, it leads to pretty much nothing. So, if you want the big house, (hands clap) the nice car, I don't think that's the meaning to life, certainly. But if you think that's something that would be nice to have, then it might be helpful to view your life in a sort of "Sims" view, and you can kind of observe where you're spending your time.
What do you clearly value in life? What skills are you upgrading? And how is that helping you?
It's only when we zoom back in and enter our bodies and view things from a human perspective that we start adding complications to it. Like, oh, do I really feel like it? Or, oh, if I do this thing, am I gonna look stupid?
And it's these thoughts and nudges and suggestions inside our brain that can manipulate what we end up spending our time doing. So, how lost in the sauce do we want to get? Do you need seven, what is it, six tips to stop procrastinating?
Did you really need to watch this video?
