Decision-making recipe that killed procrastination.

Tony Robbins’ tweet summed it up.

Have you ever felt like your brain is broken? You can’t seem to follow through with action? Like you decide to do things but never do them? Have you had this experience?

I definitely had! So many times! I lost count!

But then I learned why it happened. I learned where the process was broken. I learned how to change it.

I don’t procrastinate anymore. I can’t even seem to understand why everybody doesn’t do this the right way. Isn’t it obvious? (It wasn’t for me, so I guess it’s not 😊)

Let’s fix this!

In my previous procrastination post, we talked about the main reason for our procrastination. Brain’s mathematics, brain’s primary purpose to run our body’s energy budget effectively to keep us alive, reward/cost ratio, that we can adjust through easy self-talk - I described it all there. Check it out - I’ve been getting great feedback on it.

In this post, we’ll talk about this essential step in our decision-making process. The step, that in 99,9% of cases of procrastination we miss. The step, that’s almost a 100% guarantee that we’ll take the action we decided upon.

Such a simple step!

It has to do with our self-talk. More specifically, it has to do with the way we process decisions in our heads. Nobody taught us at school the effective way to make decisions to never procrastinate on actions.

So let’s get to it now!

Let’s take a BIG project as an example to work with.

Let’s imagine we decided to finally write that book that’s been burning to come out.

YOUR CURRENT SELF-TALK AND THE MISTAKE THAT CAUSES YOUR PROCRASTINATION

“That’s it! I’m writing the book. I’m starting on Monday!” (Let’s say today is Friday).”

And then we get all excited, we imagine how cool it’s gonna be to finally become an author, and then off we go for a walk…

You just committed a fatal mistake, that would kill your potential to take the action on Monday.

Did you catch it?

ANTI-PROCRASTINATION DECISION-MAKING PROCESS. Aka what makes action almost inevitable.

Let’s rewind. Let’s restart. Let’s do it better.

 “That’s it! I’m writing the book. I’m starting on Monday!” (Let’s say today is Friday).”

And then we get all excited, we imagine how cool it’s gonna be to finally become an author, and then… - that’s where everything changes.

We don’t go for a walk. Here’s what we do instead.

A) SCHEDULE IT

Writing a book requires a consistent time commitment, free of anything else, ideally totally in your control and not changeable.

When will you have a couple of hours, Monday to Friday to write your darling? What are the hours it’ll be most likely to happen almost every day unless there’s some emergency?

Let’s say it’s 8-10 am.

We clear our schedule for the next month to start. We make sure everyone is aware of this schedule. We make sure everything is lined up to make the writing happen.

B) MANAGE RESOURCES

Time is taken care of. Now it’s time to ensure we have all the ingredients to mix the writing smoothie on Monday morning.

Do you have a place to write?

Do you have a table and a chair?

Do you have a laptop, a typewriter, pen and paper?

If something is missing, if you need anything else you can think of - this is the time to take care of everything BEFORE Monday.

You don’t say, “I’m gonna mix an awesome, super-good-for-me green smoothie on Monday!” And then, standing in front of a blender on Monday morning, you realize you have no greens. What do you expect to happen then? Mixing a smoothie out of thin air?

C) REMINDERS

To finish off the recipe of the writing smoothie we still need one key ingredient missing - reminders.

Special kind of reminders. James Clear, the habit guy, calls them HOT🔥 reminders.

These are the kind of reminders, that we put in places where we for sure will see them at the exact moment when we can and need to take the action. (We’ll talk more about the most effective, research-based reminders in the anti-procrastination article part 3 next week.)

I’m gonna give you a short walk-through to complete our writing example.

Ideally, you’d have several reminders set up for the weekend and for Monday morning to nudge you to think of writing and to show up.

And that’s the whole decision-making recipe that cancels procrastination out of your life.

DECIDE - PLAN THE EXECUTION - EXECUTE

That’s what Tony Robbins meant in his tweet in 2017. He just never got to the extended explanation of it. He never talked about how the neuroscience of it worked.

How unless we create the “physical container”, the environment, the conditions to take actions without additional friction - our brain will “procrastinate” for 2 reasons. 1) In our busy lives we will forget about the things out of our usual routine UNLESS we handle the set-up in advance, so there’s no decision-making needed 2) If we don’t “materialize” in reality our plan in some way, right then when we make the decision, for the brain this decision is no different from other 6000 thoughts they say we have every day. Just useless noise, unless we take action right then and there when we have that thought-decision.

Do you see now, why you might be procrastinating on so many decisions you make? Big and small projects you want to do? Do you see the difference?

DO THIS NOW:

▶️Take a project you’ve been procrastinating on.

▶️Do this process.

▶️Sign up to never miss a tool to Brain Upgrading Newsletter. Share to help me stop global procrastination!

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