Thread by @Psypreneur

Procrastination is killing your dreams.

Here's a simple cheat code to killing your procrastination (so you can actually do something with your life):

[a thread]

Are you a chronic procrastinator?

Most people are.

In fact, procrastination is perfectly normal when you think about how the human brain works.

One of your brain's primary drives is to keep you alive, safe, and comfortable.

It tries to steer you away from doing things that make you uncomfortable.

If you think about this from the perspective of a caveman, that's great!

The autopilot in your brain keeps you away from things that are unsafe, uncomfortable, and could make you unalive.

This isn't just a survival mechanism.

It's a survival advantage!

Or at least it used to be...

You're not a caveman. You're a modern human.

What was a survival advantage for your ancestors is a disadvantage for you.

Procrastination often makes it difficult to survive.

If you keep putting off the things you're supposed to do, you're not going to survive for long.

Or if you do survive, you won't have a happy life.

Even if you know you'll do the work eventually...

Procrastination still causes anxiety, guilt, and low self-esteem.

Surprisingly, we often find ourselves procrastinating from things that don't take much time and/or effort.

I struggled with this a lot in college.

Even if I knew something wouldn't take much work, I'd put it off anyway.

My chronic procrastination made my college experience way less fun than it should have been.

Why does this happen?

Because the brain would rather we do something more fun, more rewarding, and more comfortable.

"Joey," I hear you thinking, "why are you telling me this?"

Because I like explaining the why behind the how.

But, let's move on to the main event.

Here's a cheat code that will trick your brain and destroy your procrastination:

The 5-minute rule. The rule is simple:

Tell yourself you'll work on <task> for just 5 minutes.

If you want to quit after 5 minutes, you'll let yourself quit and try again another time.

When you try this, you'll notice two things:

1) You'll face less resistance to starting the work.

Working for just 5 minutes sounds easily achievable to your brain.

2) You'll face no resistance to continuing the work for longer than those 5 minutes.

Why? Because the resistance to STARTING is almost always higher than the resistance to CONTINUING.

Imagine you're trying to push a boulder down a mountain.

It'll take a huge shove to get it going, but once it's moving, gravity does the rest of the work for you.

Same thing for you and your work.

The 5-minute rule helps you make that initial shove.

After that, you start building momentum and your brain doesn't resist as much!

This is a cheat code you can use any time you're procrastinating from a task - big or small.

Enjoy!

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