Stop Procrastination: Break Free to Unlock Your Hidden Potential

Introduction – Stop Procrastination

Procrastination is the ultimate thief—it steals your most precious resource, time. You will not stop procrastination in one article. However, I can help you pack one small self-help snowball. Then, it’s up to you to roll it downhill until it becomes an avalanche that will transform your life.

Now, ask yourself the following questions.

• Do you wait for the right time to start something?
• Do you never start tasks immediately?
• Do you often complete tasks at the last minute or miss deadlines?

If your answers are three yeses, then you are a procrastinator. Welcome to our club and read on.

Know Your Enemy

Merriam-Webster defines procrastinate as to put off intentionally the doing of something that should be done.

Why do we procrastinate? 

1. Inability to delay gratification.
2. Task Aversion—frustrating, dull, or unpleasant.
3. Anxiety and Fear—afraid of criticism or failure. Often disguised as perfectionism.

Notice that laziness or disorganization isn’t mentioned—a lot of writing on overcoming procrastination attempts to treat these traits with motivational techniques and productivity hacks. But pep talks, time management strategies, and setting goals to prevent procrastination are like telling someone to try harder. It’s a frustrating and futile approach. 

Those who need motivation find a life coach or drink an energy drink. If productivity tips are what you need, then visit my two Productivity posts, Productivity Secrets 1: Love Your Home-Based Business With Extra Time and Productivity Secrets 2: Unstoppable Strategies to Energize Your Work. Better yet, while you’re in the myth-busting mood check out You Think Wrong: Insider Truths About Work-At-Home Myths.

So, how do we stop procrastination? Follow along to see.

Shake Your Thought Cocktail

Contrary to common beliefs, mastering feelings has little to do with self-improvement. They are not an ingredient in our solution. Shake your thought cocktail into a new mix full of action, cheers, and truth.

• Lights, Camera, Action
• Curmudgeon to Cheerleader
• Find Your Fountain of Truth

Lights, Camera, Action

You are what you do. Others view you as your actions, and so should you. Intentions and thoughts are meaningless until acted upon.  

Picture your to-do list as a pile of logs. At this point, the order of task completion doesn’t matter. Finish things to gain momentum and grow your action muscles. Ignore feelings and chop wood.

Curmudgeon to Cheerleader

Stop procrastination by treating yourself like a curmudgeon and being your cheerleader. Rewrite thoughts and adopt new practices to evolve.

Rewriting thoughts begins with recording them. After writing them down, reflect on your thoughts. Could there be a balanced and less harmful explanation?

Now, rewrite your negative thoughts accurately and repeat this fair version to yourself when they return. Even better, speak to yourself as you would to your grandma.

Next, adopt new practices: mindfulness, affirmations, and seeking support. Mindfulness means thinking about your actions rather than following a habit or routine. Close your eyes and hear the sounds around you. Get out of your head and focus on your surroundings. Focus on what you are doing as if it were the first time. For in-depth advice on mindfulness, please visit this article.

Recite affirmations—encouraging words of self-worth. Read them when you wake up, go to bed, and whenever you need a little confidence. Below are the ones I use. Visit this site for more options.

Sample Affirmations

• Every day, I get better.
• I am a winner.
• I can do this.
• Nothing can stop me.
• I will overcome all obstacles.
• I am (who you want to be). e.g., I am a successful entrepreneur.

Finally, seek support. Reach out to friends and family to discuss possible procrastination solutions. Join a support group, pursue a mentor, or hire a therapist.

Your Fountain of Truth

Find your fountain of truth. Work is more than just a way to make money; life is more than a series of stages. Meaning reveals a path to purpose. Follow the list below to your fountain of truth.

If work-life balance is something you want to work on, visit Whip Work-Life Balance: Proven Ways to Win in Both Worlds.

• Spike the Ball
• Trade in your Mirror for a Window
• Why-Fi Connection

When you score a proverbial touchdown, spike the ball. Better yet. Add a little dance. No win is too small to celebrate. No celebration is too big. Share your accomplishments. You’re conducting a positive momentum locomotive. All aboard. Woo Woo!

Trade in your mirror for a window. Self-improvement blossoms when you shift your focus from yourself to others. For work, focus on your customers, clients, and partners. In life, support your family or community. Emphasize tasks that improve lives.

Set up a Why-Fi connection. Understand the why behind your work. Money is nice, but does it inspire you? Pick compelling goals linked to your values. A high-speed Why-Fi connection stops procrastination before it even starts.

Do the Habit Hokey Pokey

Put your new habit in, take your old habit out, and shake it all about. Do the habit hokey pokey and turn yourself around to productive habits. That’s what it’s all about.

A habit is a trigger and a corresponding behavior. Habits can be our greatest ally, worst enemy, and sometimes both simultaneously. Follow these steps to swap bad habits for better ones and to stop procrastination,

1. Pull the Trigger
2. View Your Magic Eight Ball
3. Padlock Procrastination
4. Trigger a New You

Pull the Trigger

What’s a trigger? It’s a cue that signals us to engage in a behavior. A trigger we all have is waking up, which triggers you to drink coffee or brush your teeth.

Pulling the trigger means identifying and avoiding procrastination cues by reflecting on past behavior and using a journal. First, reflect on when you procrastinate. What were you doing? How were you feeling? If you need help finding your triggers, review the list later in this article.

Sometimes, reflection finds all your triggers. Otherwise, use a journal. Sign up for our newsletter on our special offers page to receive a free stop procrastination journal and much more.

View Your Magic Eight Ball

Does changing contexts strengthen the ability to stop delaying tasks? Magic Eight Ball says, “Definitely, yes.” Shake life’s Magic Eight Ball until it reveals the context you desire. In other words, rig the outcome. Disarm triggers and padlock procrastination to change your context.

Disarm Triggers

• Be Sherlock Holmes
• Add Spice
• Emotional Tune-Up
• Relationship Ringer

Be Sherlock Holmes

When you don’t understand a task, or it is too difficult, be Sherlock Holmes— research, learn new skills, and ask others. Research has never been more accessible through search engines, YouTube, and generative AI: OpenAI’s GPT, Google’s Gemini, or Microsoft’s Copilot.

Learn new skills—attend a course, read a book, or listen to a podcast. As you learn, apply it to your work. Alternatively, if you know someone who has the answer, engage them. Be a detective to understand tasks.

Add Spice

Add spice when a task is tedious, like flavoring a bland dish. Push through monotony via pairing enjoyable activities, pet work projects, visualizing outcomes, and gamifying work.

Pair boring and enjoyable activities to counteract boredom. Listen to music or hang out at the park while you work. Alternatively, pick a pet work project. Work on it 15% of your time to add flavor to your day.

When boredom strikes, visualize outcomes and reflect on how you felt when you finished past successes. Use the satisfaction of future completion to motivate you.

Finally, treat work as a game to level up boring tasks. Spin the wheel of task roulette by placing every assignment into a hat and drawing randomly. Alternatively, add a point system to level up gamification to the boss level.  

Point System

Points: Task Completion = 10 pts, Weekly Milestones = 50 pts, Monthly Milestones = 250 pts, Early Completion Bonus (finish 25% early) = 10% x pts Rewards: Day Off = 500 pts, 1 hr. Indulgence Pass (video games, TV, social media) = 50 pts, 1 hr. Pass for Pet Work Project = 25 pts.

Emotional Tune-Up

Look under your hood and give yourself an emotional tune-up—punch perfection and limit choices. Reframe outcomes as learning, set reasonable goals, and practice compassion to punch perfectionism. Escape the binary world of success and failure—view outcomes as an opportunity to learn.

Set goals to the minimum required to meet a purpose. Good enough splits logs. Demanding too much is cruel. Offer compassion to yourself and others. Stop striving for perfection.

Limit choices to avoid decision fatigue. All decisions, big or small, drain the same amount of mental energy. Prevent minor decisions—buy only matching clothes, repeat activities at the same time daily, or meal prep for a whole week. Burn your energy for things that matter.

Relationship Ringer

Relationships are the rocket fuel for life. Be a guided missile instead of a bottle rocket: round your circle, acquire an accountability partner, and practice empathy.

Round your circle by swapping negative people for positive ones. A simple relationship litmus test: Do we enrich or degrade each other’s lives? You’ll struggle to stop procrastination without strong, positive relationships.

Acquire an accountability partner—leverage your network, social media, professional organizations, or accountability apps (Focusemate, StickK, or Habitica). Peers holding each other accountable chops more wood.

Finally, practice empathy. Listen to others. Assume people have positive intent. Hug someone ASAP!

Padlock Procrastination

To make unwanted behaviors harder, padlock procrastination.

• Tame Temptation
• Know Your Strengths
• Build Better Behaviors

Tame Temptation

Tame temptations through deleting, disabling, labeling, and punishing. Delete by placing your phone in a drawer, removing files, games, and apps, and sanitizing your sightline.

To disable distractions, turn off notifications and alerts and employ do-not-disturb features. Further, block games, websites, email, and social media via apps (StayFocused, SelfControl, Freedom, Appblock, or Flipd). Disconnect from the internet when it isn’t needed.

Label temptations. Place notes on your fridge, TV, or phone saying, “Stop!” Compose a not-to-do list. After procrastinating, punish yourself to make procrastination productive. Pay a dollar into a piggy bank, assign a chore, or perform pushups.

Know Your Strengths

Know your strengths: pinpoint prime time, initiate with interests, and hit the road. Prime time is when you are in control and should attack challenging tasks. Initiating with interests means leading with an enjoyable activity. If you love to write, jot a quick story about the task.

Hitting the road is about understanding locations and how they impact your current activity. Need to brainstorm? Surround yourself with activity. Detailed financials? Try a library. 

Build Better Behaviors

Instead of eating an entire onion, peel each layer one at a time. Engage in one activity for your persona. Want to be a writer? Spend 15 minutes a day writing for one week. Gradually lengthen and add steps until you are the desired persona. Master one persona? Move on to another until you are who you want to be.

To avoid sliding back into unwanted ones, build better behaviors—choose a persona and peel the onion. Decide who and what you want to be. In other words, a persona. For instance, if you want to be in great shape, act like a fit person.

Trigger a New You

There are four main types of triggers.

• Sensory
• If Then
• Location
• Emotional

Sensory

Sensory triggers include the five senses as well as sensations.

1. Touch: Squeeze a stress ball before relaxing.
2. Sight: Read your goals after finishing a task for a cue.
3. Smell: The aroma of coffee signals work.
4. Hearing: Listen to the same song as a cue to relax.
5. Taste: Drink a protein shake before you exercise.
6. Thirst: Feel thirsty. Drink.
7. Hunger: Feel hungry. Eat.
8. Fatigue: Take a break or a nap.

If Then

If Then triggers are planned to engage desired behaviors when the if happens.

1. Time-Based: Set a specific time for checking email.
2. Event-Based: Wake up and brush your teeth.
3. Contrast: When you procrastinate, read positive affirmations to yourself.
4. Social: When walking into a room, talk to someone.
5. Technology: Set task alarms.

Location

Engage in a behavior every time you enter a specific place.

1. Workspace: When you enter your office, work.
2. Recreational: Take breaks on your porch or balcony.
3. Educational: Sit in a specific chair for learning activities.
4. Fitness: Work out when you go to the gym.
5. Social: Converse at coffee shops or conferences.

Emotional

Engage in a behavior every time you feel a particular emotion.

1. Stress:  Meditate.
2. Rejection: Gather feedback.
3. Frustration: Search for new tools and resources.
4. Anxiety: Write your thoughts into a journal.
5. Satisfaction: Celebrate your victory.
6. Excitement: Share joy with others.

Enhance your triggers using routines and specificity. Build routines for daily necessities: exercise, eating, and sleep. Surround these necessities with tasks and triggers to form a routine train.

Sample Routine Train

Wake Up > Drink Coffee > Check Email > Task Management > Write > Social Media > Lunch > Research > Exercise > Read > Dinner > Family > Watch Shows > Bed.

Devise triggers that are specific and plentiful. To avoid confusion, choose specific cues that are identifiable. Plentiful triggers happen often enough to have an impact.

Commit to Grit – Building Momentum Against Procrastination

The foundation of any self-help effort is to devise a plan and stick to it. Overcoming procrastination is no different. In other words, commit to grit. What does that mean?

• Consistency Carves the Canyon
• Tally the Transformation

Consistency Carves the Canyon

• Routine to Habit
• Practice Patience
• Momentum Marathon

Routines are scaffolding for habits. Converting a routine to a habit is a matter of repetition. There is no set amount of time attributed to habit formation. However, a common rule of thumb suggests following a routine fifty times to form a habit.

Practice patience. Slipups are inevitable. Forgive yourself.  Avoid steaks of undesirable behaviors to prevent forming harmful routines and habits. Set modest goals. It is better to achieve an easy goal than to fall short of a hard one.

Finally, realize that self-help is a momentum marathon. Consider how much effort it takes to start or stop a locomotive. Progress is about applying consistent pressure over time. That’s the model train, pun intended, for your self-improvement journey.

Tally the Transformation

The only way to know if you are improving is to tally the transformation, which breaks down into two items.

• Track Progress
• Habit Journal

At a minimum, track progress on daily hours spent working and procrastinating. You can add more items like family time, hobbies, interruptions, and anything else you want to improve. Tally your metrics daily and conduct weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly reviews.

Convert routines to habits with a habit journal. Again, sign up for our newsletter to receive a habit journal and much more.

Conclusion – Stop Procrastination

Overcoming procrastination is like a ping-pong game with a balloon. It calls for a lot of swings and even more patience. Remember, procrastination does not define you. It’s a damaging behavior you can defeat. Chop wood until the forest of procrastination is no more.

I love recommendations and feedback. Hit me up in the comments section or email me. I would love to hear from you and learn from your experiences and perspectives on procrastination (if you get around to it *laugh*).

For background on the who, what, and why of remoteworkadvice.com, see our Home Page. Thank you for reading. Chop some wood today.