Something that’s helped me a lot as a chronic procrastinator is the realization that we can’t always trust what our brain is telling us, and learning to identify the lies and retrain your behavior can be a powerful way to break this cycle. A few examples:
What my brain says: “Looks like you have a meeting at 2pm on Tuesday. Don’t worry, I’ll remember it for you. Adding it to the calendar seems like a lot of work.”
What I do: Immediately add it to my calendar and set an alert/reminder. Calendar app is reliable, brain is not. If I’m feeling resistant to this step, I remind myself that the whole process takes less than a minute, and once it’s done I can relax and remove this item from my mental load
What my brain says: “That looks like an important phone number/password/email/etc. Don’t worry I’ll remember it.”
What I do: Immediately write it down and put it in my (phone as a contact/password manager/email contacts/etc.).
What my brain says: “We need to do {task} later, don’t worry I’ll remember it for you”
What I do: Immediately add {task} to my Trello board as a card with any necessary details (I.e. phone numbers I might need to call, notes I might forget)
Hope this is helpful to others out there who struggle with these things. The important thing is to be critical of what your brain tells you, look at your own processes and where they break down, and find ways to make them bulletproof.
That's the attitude, just do it. In my experience if you don't it becomes more and more difficult, if you left it 1 day it can wait one week, and so on xD
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Something that’s helped me a lot as a chronic procrastinator is the realization that we can’t always trust what our brain is telling us, and learning to identify the lies and retrain your behavior can be a powerful way to break this cycle. A few examples:
What I do: Immediately add it to my calendar and set an alert/reminder. Calendar app is reliable, brain is not. If I’m feeling resistant to this step, I remind myself that the whole process takes less than a minute, and once it’s done I can relax and remove this item from my mental load
What my brain says: “That looks like an important phone number/password/email/etc. Don’t worry I’ll remember it.”
What I do: Immediately write it down and put it in my (phone as a contact/password manager/email contacts/etc.).
What my brain says: “We need to do {task} later, don’t worry I’ll remember it for you”
What I do: Immediately add {task} to my Trello board as a card with any necessary details (I.e. phone numbers I might need to call, notes I might forget)
Hope this is helpful to others out there who struggle with these things. The important thing is to be critical of what your brain tells you, look at your own processes and where they break down, and find ways to make them bulletproof.
That's great! I realize I do trust it in some cases and most of those times I forget... Will make an attempt to be critical!
Good tip. Just go ahead and do it, get it out of the way.
That's the attitude, just do it. In my experience if you don't it becomes more and more difficult, if you left it 1 day it can wait one week, and so on xD