Little Things That Matter

Learn From The Past, Live The Present and Have An Open Mind to Face Tomorrow

5 Sure Ways To Manage Procrastination

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Source : National Geographic

As an entrepreneur and freelance consultant, I envision and strive to connect with my clients and grow my business and reach.

Growing my business and its reach is also a challenge, I need to face and overcome on a daily basis, and on some days I tend to procrastinate on better or improved ways to do it. I ask myself as to where I can grow and do better and thus push myself beyond my comfort zone.

Whilst I enjoy coaching, facilitating, speaking and designing workshops and preparing content for it, there are other activities that I usually tend to put away. Activities such as networking, finding clients who will benefit from coaching, writing my book (work in process), though I enjoy, I tend to push it away to either a later time or even worse, to a later day.

I think this happens because many times, my brain doesn’t see the immediate reward and thus it triggers various emotions such as self-criticizing, judgment, frustration and self-doubt.

Many clients whom I coach face a common barrier in time management and procrastination. Their barriers could result from lack of motivation, being a victim to  “The Tyranny of the Urgent”, or not being committed to what they want to achieve.

⇒How do you motivate yourself to take that next step?
⇒What can you do to manage your time in a day better?
⇒What are some of the reasons for not feeling a sense of urgency to accomplish a goal?
⇒How driven are you by your list of things to do? Are you able to see the link between what you need to do in order to get what you want?
⇒How are you managing your conflicting emotions and thus your brain to move forward and not procrastinate?

What strategies can you use to give you that adrenalin to “Just Do It”?

 

1. Use of words

What words are you using with respect to the activity that you are procrastinating on?

Is it necessity words like should be/do, must do, have to do, ought to, Or
probability words like could do, can do, may do, I will try, I might be able to Or
possibility words like I want to, I love to, I like to, will do

2. Feelings

Once you have Identified the words you use to activities which you tend to drag your feet on, ask yourself what feelings do those words generate in you? What emotions do those feelings generate? What do you do with those emotions? Do you get into a critical mood or a self-pity mode? How is that helping you? Acknowledge your feelings and emotions and what are some of the ways you can best manage that.

3. The Past

On activities that you have procrastinated on, in the past, what changed for you to get it done? How did you motivate yourself? What words did you use? Did you seek guidance or advise from a friend or mentor?

4. The “Why”

Ask yourself what is the purpose of what you are doing? Linking to the why I do what I do helps me to continue my journey towards achieving my goal and vision though I may not be necessarily motivated with each and every aspect of that path. 

Reminding myself of “The Why” keeps me focused and gives me the #clarity and sense of direction.

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5. Manage

We are emotional beings and it is not possible to live without emotions nor suppress them. What we can do is to manage our emotions. Find the why, small rewards that keeps me going, taking a break, asking what is in that activity that triggers the emotions are some of the ways I find it useful to manage my procrastination. Writing down your ideal day and your day as is will help you identify the gaps and help you overcome them. Whose help or what resources do you need to give you that boost to move forward?

6. Mindfulness

We think we multitask. Science has proved that our brains cannot multi task. Two activities that require us to use our executive center of the brain, The Pre-Frontal Cortex, cannot be done at the same time. When we engage in multitasking, we overwhelm our brain and that results in lack of focus and thus in not delivering the desired results.

#Mindfulness is a great way to bring focus back to our task in hand #leadfromwithin

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What strategies have you adopted to get over procrastination?
How do you motivate yourself to do the tasks which are necessary but you may not be excited about?

Let’s connect to continue the conversation.

Co Author of the Book “Energize Your Leadership”  Buy Now

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When The Going Gets Tough

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“I’m stuck.”

“I feel I’m running on a hamster wheel with no scope to get off. “

“I’ve no time to think or look at anything else because I’m always swamped with so many things I’ve to do.”

How often have you felt this way or heard your friends, partners, colleagues say this at various points in your day or their day?

Several of my coaching relationships start at this point.

We all go through this at several points in our life or at specific points in our day.

Is it a regular phenomena or something you feel at specific points in your day or specific periods of time at a stretch?

If you look around you, you’ll realize many people are stressed out or at a breaking point.

What are these stressors ?

Is it with work?

Is it with some transitions that you are going through at work or in life?

Is it with overall life in general in terms of your dreams and priorities?

What is the cause of these stressors? 

Is it fear of being dispensable and losing your job or not being able to advance in your area of talent? Or being forced on account of lack of choices ?

What about your day-to-day stressors? Is it because you are not taking the required break ? Are you facing the fear of missing out, if you are not seemingly present in what you are doing ?

What is the impact of these stressors?

– are you being thoughtful in your responses on email and other forms of communication?

– do you tend to not pay attention to the tasks that you are doing and to the people around you ?

– how often do you play the blame game in these moments ?

– do you feel threatened and sense of fear or a fight or flight mode?

Why does this happen – our brain is complex and research from various neuroscientists are discovering more and more that the parts of the brain work together as a symphony, so as we separate one part out, we have to remember that it doesn’t work in isolation. The prefrontal cortex (PFC), which is the executive center controls our ability to understand, think, decide, analyze, memorize, inhibit and recall.   So the PFC is vital to our daily survival, and yet there are many factors (environmental, hormonal, and genetic ) that can impact how well it works. The activity of the PFC Is also extremely energy-consuming.

If anything internal or external is impacting the functioning of the PFC, the activities relating to the 5 things above become harder and harder. Decisions will be harder to make, you won’t understand things as easily and inhibiting behaviors, or emotions will be harder.

Most of us are used to reading a proposal, at the same trying to understand it, possibly recall something from previous information. The more we add to this mix, the tougher it gets for the PFC to manage.

And one of the biggest drains to the PFC is inhibition, humans have the ability to socially control behaviors and emotions. And we need this to be able to function. These inhibitions could be in the form of not deciding to drink another cup of coffee or  go to dinner with a friend since you have to complete the task at hand.

Social Control is draining to the brain, and that thrown in with the other activities of the PFC fuels the drain. The more drained we become, the less effective we are at being able to understand, think, decide,  question, memorize or recall.

The more the stress/threat to the PFC, the greater the chances of our amygdala (flight or fight response part of our brain ) to take over, thus increasing our emotional response, and reducing our ability to use the PFC in general.

Do we need to take breaks ?

Research participants were nearly twice as likely to give the correct response to a complex decision-making problem if they were distracted by a simple three-minute number-matching task before being asked for their answers, says a team led by Marlène Abadie of the University of Toulouse in France. A more-demanding distraction had no such effect. Extracted from HBR

How do we get away from these breaking points or stressors

1. Self awareness – do you know your limits? How comfortable are you in saying No? Self awareness is your knowledge, moment by moment of what is going on within you, what is your emotional state, and the choice you make at that moment on how to behave.

2. Self Regulation – are you setting your priorities ? Do you schedule your day and prioritize ? Do you tend to react to every phenomenon that comes by your way during the day? Self regulation is having a degree of present moment self-awareness.

3. Self generation – how often do you reflect and renew? Do you question your beliefs and assumptions and ready to challenge them and move on? Self-generation is about creating alignment between moment to moment behavior and action with the desired outcome.

Do you take downtime, no matter how busy a schedule you may have?

Leadership success goes beyond your talents, skills, knowledge and experience. All the talent and skills are of no use if the moment by moment choice in terms of your behavior and action is not mindful.

When the heat is on and the going gets tough, are you on a reactive behavior as a leader or are you one who takes a calm, focused and balanced view? Do you encourage your team and help them refocus, thus building the trust.

The mental fences or shackles is what we set for ourselves. Learn to connect with your inner self and focus on your vision but allow yourself to take breaks.

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10 “Choice” Secrets That Each Of You should Know

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On April 26, 2003, Ralston, a 27-year-old mountaineer set out on a day of adventure in remote southeast Utah, alone and without telling anyone where he had gone.

“I dislodge – I pull – a large, like, 800-pound rock loose, that falls with me and eventually traps my right hand against the canyon wall.

He had only a liter of water, and no jacket. “I didn’t have plans to be out overnight,” he said.

But he was out overnight – five nights in all – 127 hours between a rock and a hard place

Ralston says it wasn’t long before he realized he faced an almost unfathomable choice.

“It was a conversation I had out loud with myself. You’re gonna have to cut your arm off, Aron. ‘I don’t want to cut my arm off.’ Dude, you’re gonna have to cut your arm off,” he said. “I said that to myself out loud in the canyon.”  Link

Aron Ralston had to make the Choice to amputate his right hand in order to survive a mountaineering ordeal.

Each of us make a choice every second or fraction thereof, be it, to wake up at a specific time, to eat breakfast, to drive or take public transport, to take medication or not when we are sick and the list goes on.

Choice, be it trivial or life altering, and a choice whether it is in the affirmative or negative or not making one at all, is an integral part of our life.

To be able to choose, we must evaluate all available options and select one for the greater good especially in those that touches and affects the lives of others.

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) located in the front part of the brain just behind the forehead acts as the brain’s command center. It is this part of the brain that allows us to choose rationally, to plan ahead, develop strategies, and also to adjust actions or reactions depending on situations. The PFC improves with age and process of growth and development continues well past adolescence. It enables us to focus our thoughts,  thinking whilst learning or analyzing different concepts or activities including complex ones.

Many times the desire of choice is so strong that it could interfere with one’s ability to determine the best option possible out of all those presented. A perfect example is a retail binge which we yield to in that impulsive moment when we see something spectacular, though if we had exercised the power of choice, we may have decided to wait till later.

Today, we have many choices to live our life contrary to two or three decades back. The desire to choose is natural and one that is required for survival.  But do we exercise our choice properly and what happens to those who are denied the choice of basic rights ?

Sheena Iyengar in her Book “The Art Of Choosing” (a must read) explains that humans voluntarily create and follow systems that restrict some of our individual choices to benefit the greater good.  We all face situations in our lives may be at work or in day-to-day where things happen beyond our control.  She refers to several studies that have found that stress increases when one works in circumstances where they had less control or brain perceives that they have less control than what they expected.  But in addition to the stressors at work , we suffer from the daily grind that is beyond our control  be it the pollution, traffic jams, delayed public transport leading to frustration and health issues.

However, we have the ability to create choice by altering our interpretations of what is around us. We have the choice to determine how we behave in challenging and less comfortable situations and it is this that distinguishes each of us.

I have been inspired by her book to write this post. She has also done a Ted talk on the same topic.

So how can we exercise our conscious choice for betterment of “You” and the world at large. Choose to

  1. Be positive – life is not a bed of roses. Roses grow with thorns and life will throw challenges which may throw you off the cliff, but a negative attitude makes it worse. Choose to be a realist but be positive.
  2. Be You  – look at a child. You see authenticity, spontaneity and children just love being who they are.  Always make it a point to be you and Choose You without hypocrisy.
  3. Be kind – You would like to be showered with kindness and that goes for each soul in this world.  Pass on the kindness. Surprise yourself and others by a random act of kindness.
  4. Be happy – there is no Vitamin to be happy but “being one.” You control your happiness by the choices you make, don’t make or not choosing at all.
  5. Be helpful – don’t walk away and turn your face to someone in needed of help.
  6. Be appreciative of your life, people you have around you, and every little thing that matters. The fact that you wake up to a new dawn which may have been denied to someone else is one to be thankful for.
  7. Be Committed – Actions give power to your words, stay true to your word and the responsibilities that you have chosen.
  8. Be responsible for your 2*2 space, for protecting the environment, for spreading the right values and for leaving the world a better place than when you came in.
  9. Be Mindful – no matter who you are or what you are be human first and be mindful of what you do, speak and act.   Remember that, “be who you want someone else to be”, make your deeds worthy of being emulated by others.
  10. Not give up – know when to walk away and when not to give up. In fulfilling your dreams don’t squash someone else’s dreams.

No matter what our background or differences it is the choices that connect us.  Choice could be something as simple as to Smile.

 Every choice you make has an end result – Zig Ziglar.