A counter intuitive method I’m trying out to beat procrastination

I’ve often been told the best way to avoid procrastination is to just get started on the thing you want to do. It all just sounded too self helpy for my liking. Take action! Just start! I thought that all sounds nice on the face of it but it’s not helpful it’s very hard to take action and it takes a naturally motivated person to live by that philosophy, to “just do it”. All these things are true, but for most people, including myself, it isn’t that simple. Except, it is. Well, it’s at least half true, you see with me when I procrastinate, (which is basically when I’m awake,) telling myself to just take action to just get started, to sit and start and to let the motivation ensue mid work instead of being motivated beforehand, all these things never worked for me. Until I realised something, when I do just get started it does partly work, but here is what I will do. I will say ok minimum 100 words today, small goal, right? Then as I’m writing I find myself doing more after 100 words. Either unconsciously, while in the flow state or consciously, because it was too easy, and I didn’t think I’d achieved enough. What I tend to do is set one big goal and break that down into some much smaller goals to make them seem doable and when I reach those smaller goals I just continue. The idea here is if you set a goal you reach it and you don’t feel like you’ve done enough so you do more, great. If you do just your small goal and not anymore then it’s not ideal but still, great! Because you did what you said you wanted to achieve. Overtime you will find you are being much more efficient with your goals and work then you would have done without this philosophy if you are a procrastinator. Let’s say you are writing a novel you can say to yourself one line every day, you are most likely if not straight away, eventually going to start writing more than just one line. Or if you want to exercise, you could say a single push up every day, once again the rule applies you will end up doing more than one.

Or if you want to be more social and optimistic, instead of focusing on lighting up a room just focused on at least greeting people every day, it’s still a small victory. If you want to read more say to yourself you will read at least a page a day.

Whether you stick to these minimums or go over them you will find overtime you’ve done more work than you expected of yourself.

So essentially set goals so small it’s pretty much impossible for you to not achieve until you find yourself some way or another going beyond that goal and achieving more than you set out to achieve.