Procrastination

For the last month I’ve been immersing myself into the study of procrastination. What I’ve found is a combination of parts of right vs. left brain thinking, of rational vs. emotional thinking, of conscious vs. sub-conscious thinking, psychology, and a self discovery of what “The Thing” was in the movie, City Slickers.

Now I can’t really tell you what it is because it’s going to be different for everybody. What I can do is tell you that it will make you realize that you know what you don’t know. That is that you are being controlled by your subconscious that was conditioned in the past by things that happened in the past.

What I’ve found is that many of the habits you need to succeed in life and in business, persistence, confidence, discipline, integrity, empathy, character, curiosity, genuineness, and honesty, you are aware of in your everyday conscious thinking, may be at odds to what your subconscious tells you. Your sub-conscious has been conditioned by experiences you’ve learned over time, but most were learned when you were a child.

People act because of really only two things; it’s because either they like something, or because they don’t. We’re talking about the pleasure and pain dichotomy here. In a sense, we are like Pavloinian subjects and the first word everyone learns is “no”. We learn real fast what that means. We are told it starting when we are infants and it continues for as long as we let it. In some respects just about everyone is telling us what we can do and what we can’t. So when we decide to buck the trend and become an entrepreneur we are faced with people who say we can’t do that. It’s expected we get a “real” job and

I’m going through a list of things that will help make your life less stressful. By New Year’s Evening you should be prepared to have a much more relaxed and successful 2010. So let’s get started. You know the old cartoons that depict good and evil standing on your shoulder having a conversation with your conscience? I have a third entity that hides behind my head and coaches one of those. He is known as Mr. Procrastinator. You can only guess which one he is helping. He is making sure that you can find all 101 reasons not to finish something you start. Yes Mr. Procrastination is robbing you of your sense of accomplishment, your success, and giving you lots of unneeded stress!

The number one best way to rid yourself of stress is to get things done. Have Mr. Accomplishment battling Mr. Procrastinator. Any tasks you have to do typically can be broken down into smaller sub-tasks. Then just do them, one after another. It is usually harder just thinking about tackling your task list than it is to actually just start doing it. What works for me is using index cards to create the lists. Once they are written down, this will free up much of the mental space required and you can concentrate at the task at hand.

What you will really get out of it, is a lot more done, a sense of accomplishment, and a LOT less stress. Tomorrow, I’ll tackle number 2.

Have a great stress free Holiday!

*I used cows because I live in the dairy state of Wisconsin.