How To Not Procrastinate
Before you put yourself through yet another guilt trip, have you thought about slowing down a little and consider the possibility that maybe procrastination could be a good thing?
This is a very less traveled territory that many people fear to go near. Most people think that working hard mean they have to sit down before the computer, the papers, and books, and remain in the same posture for as long as possible, be very focused, and type something non-stop.
Procrastination Might Be A Good Thing
Maybe procrastination is your better self telling you that the assignments you are given, or the “shoulds” you impose on yourself don’t make sense at all. Maybe there are something better to do.
There are something better. If you follow this thinking pattern and develop it further, you may end up doing something much more exciting and significant. Deep in your heart you know you shouldn’t keep yourself too busy to do what you truly love. What do you truly love? Most people are not conscious of that. Or they do know, but they think they have to do X (pay their due) first before they can do what they love full time.
For me, I know I have a lot of other sides. I want to compose music. I want to be the delegator and have a bunch of staff fulfilling my wishes (while I focus on the million dollars ideas). I want to do brand new things that no one has done before and add values to the world. If I allow myself to become too busy with mundane and urgent tasks, I will never have time to create the lifestyle I truly want.
You do know that most people waste at least 80% of their time, no matter how busy they think they are?
Maybe there are better ways to do things. Are you doing what you think you should be doing because of what other people think? because your parents have always done it this way? Your school taught you that? All your peers are doing it like that?
Some celebrities, for example, are able to make bigger money because they take risk and walk the road less travelled. They are honest with what they truly want to do. Still, it is not the highest level that I want to talk about here.
Borned in Hong Kong, and having lived there for almost 18 years, I was very conditioned by the education system there. It was all about exams, and you only had a handful few subjects that people would consider to be real education, such as language (Chinese and English), mathematics, sciences, and the lesser one are history, literatures, arts… and the least ones are business, accounting, and etc.
It took me a long time to finally do a project such as this website. It is very new to me in that I can ultilize my insights on things, and the ability to write them in engaging ways. I use this skills set to sell things that I believe in, and introduce better solutions to the suffering world.
I made the decision to not get stuck in a cookie cutter job that other people designed for me, because I probably don’t fit in to most systems and their work cultures. I want to make money through activities that are congruent with my conscience. I also want to be myself while doing it.
I did force myself to look for some jobs before, but always end up going back to building my own business. I feared that I might have to participate in things that I don’t agree with or have to fight for my conscience on the job. I didn’t even realize that I had that fear deep in my subconsciousness. If I knew what were holding me back, at least that would help me eliminiate most of the potential job options.
Are you procrastinating because what you are going to do do not really express who you are? Do your core values have conflict with the very things that you try to make yourself do?
More often than not, I find that procrastination is a very spiritual response to things that could endanger my health, ultimate success, spiritual wellbeing, creativity, and true potential.
As a Christian, I have spent a lot of time on developing my characters and spirituality. The down side of that was that this process keeps my path super narrow. I didn’t even realize that because my spirituality has been with me for so long I have probably internalized a lot of things subconsciously.
I didn’t realize that there were situations that didn’t fit well with what I truly believe in, and I ended up procrastinating. When I looked back after years of maturation and spiritual growth, here are some of the reasons why I procrastinated things: I delayed writing a work report because I really believed my position should keep things minimal instead of creating non-productive work (I was in a public office and now I realize I believe in small government), I postponed finding new prospects for my insurance business because deep down I believed my supervisor was a bad person to do business with, I couldn’t bring myself to finding jobs in the financial industry because I knew they were heavily subsidized by the governments and their products weren’t the best for the customers, and many times I was unable to sit still and focus on the computer, but I didn’t know why, and later found out it was because my eyes were really tired, my back was sore, and forcing myself to work would endanger my health.
Better Things May Come After You Hold Off
Many times there were products that I wanted to sell, projects I wanted to start, and methodologies that I wanted to quickly adopt, but somehow I couldn’t make myself to do them. Now that I have a better spiritual awareness, I realize that they were all questionable things that I knew were fishy at the time. In my mind, they seemed good, but in the deep down, deep beyond the level of awareness I had at the time, I “knew” they were questionable. My spirit wouldn’t let me do it.
I could probably force myself through, but when I finally become fully aware why I shouldn’t have started the project and quit, it would be painful. The efforts and times I put into the activities were wasted when I had to quit.
Prior to this website I had made quite a few online projects that I later quitted, because I used some illegitimate tools to cheat Google for better ranking for my webpages.
I wasn’t really aware of what I was doing at the time. I was influenced by an Internet Marketer who made a handsome profit using the method. Somehow I was able to rationalize it and when the passive income reached about $10-30 dollars per day, I found out what I was doing was equal to stealing. I was stealing from my competitors who got their ranks by doing the legitimate things.
Everytime I successfully held off from a immoral business decision, I would soon find a better way to do it that was legitimate. Turning out that it was a temptation that tried to fake me. The temptation would be so strong at first, which made me feel like there were no other ways, but that it was the only way if I wanted to make money.
If only I speed up this spiritual process, I would have reached the promise land much earlier! It’s faith. You have to believe that suffering for the short term is worth it. You have to believe that a better option is just around the corner.
The short term money isn’t that easy to make. What you sow is what you reap. When you make moral compromises, they will come back at you later.
Google has declared wars to spammy sites. Many spammers lost their previous rankings on the search engine results. Many of them will try new things to game the system again, but they have to restart everytime Google wins.
I knew it since 3 years ago, but I still made one compromise that made me restart again. I wondered why I didn’t think of a better way, which I know now, earlier. When you settle with a bad decision, the true solution won’t come to you. The immoral decisions will stifle the inception of the right decisions. I didn’t see the godly option with crystal clear clarity until I gave up the questionable business practice.
Don’t Care About What Other People Think
If you let them, they will impose their views on you. At least 90% of what most people think are wrong, and their views contradict with one another anyway.
Do whatever it takes to meet the minimum, but spend the rest of your energy to recreate your tasks to make them right and meaningful. In the short run, you may have to put up with the mundane and urgences, but in the long run, you may hire people to take care of them, while you go on your marry way to do what you love.
If you don’t really believe the tasks that people impose on you are important, try to streamline them, drop them, replace them, or retailor them until you do only what you believe truly matter.
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Next time when you procrastinate, stop and think about whether you should do it first. Listen to the truth, and it might tell you things that you dare not imagine before. If you obey the truth and be courageous, you might be 100x more successful than you would be if you continue with the status quo (busy for the sake of being busy).
