Need Help?

[shubhankar]

I always get distracted from what wanted to do, I am 21 year old and I am in programming industry, I actually wanted to learn some important stuff which will improve my career and i also wanted to work on my personal stuff such as meditation, developing habit of reading books, daily exercise but Within few days, I get distracted from everything, I tried it for the 4th time and I  failed. What thing I am missing right now, should i need to work on my subconscious level ?

[B_Naz]

What activities do you do to distract yourself?

[shubhankar]

@B_Naz I started procrastinating and  wasting time on movies rather to focus on my work.

[ajasatya]

1 hour ago, shubhankar said:

What thing I am missing right now, should i need to work on my subconscious level ?

investigate the source of impatience. sit down for 20 minutes right now and do nothing. you will feel impatience arising.

yes, seriously, right now... it's now or never.

[shubhankar]

@ajasatya I did and I was thinking about movies and i wanted to move as soon as possible and wanted to distract myself from anything which allows me not sit idle and do nothing. I was feeling impatient.

[ajasatya]

11 minutes ago, shubhankar said:

@ajasatya I did and I was thinking about movies and i wanted to move as soon as possible and wanted to distract myself from anything which allows me not sit idle and do nothing. I was feeling impatient.

amazing. but it doesn't seem like you were able to find the source of impatience. you just felt impatient.

why don't you give it a try everyday?

Edited March 24, 2019 by ajasatya

[Truth Addict]

@shubhankar

You get distracted by your thoughts.

What are the thoughts pointing you to do?

You can ignore the thoughts and keep working (do what you have to do), or you can follow your thoughts (do what you want to do).

The first option will make you successful, the latter will make you happy.

You need to strike a perfect balance between what you want and what you need in order to become the best version of yourself.

It's an art, and it will take time and practice.

[Mu_]

Maybe try again, but do half as much as you were trying to do before and see if that works.  Allow yourself to watch some movies and learn something new.  Sometimes rigid learning fails.  Respect your desires and interests to, but remind yourself that you do want to make progress in the new learning direction and stick to it.  If you fail on your commitment for a day or two, dont panic beat up on yourself and throw it all away, just remind yourself that change is hard (AND IT CAN BE) and just get back to where you left off sooner than later.  After doing this for a period you will feel more empowered and do a little more.  Then you probably will retract to your old ways, but again just remind yourself of the above, and rinse and repeat.

[tedens]

@shubhankar what help do you need?

Edited March 25, 2019 by tedens

[Rigel]

Maybe try keeping a journal and write every morning what's on your mind, what you want to accomplish that day and the reason why you want to do it. 

I find that journaling is amazing keep some sort of clarity of though and get things out into your consciousness. 

[shubhankar]

@ajasatya I think I am always in a hurry and i am quite goal oriented, I don't enjoy the process rather than i focus more on achieving goal, and I think this is the reason for my impatience and this results  a distraction as i don't enjoy process. 

[ajasatya]

1 hour ago, shubhankar said:

i am quite goal oriented
I don't enjoy the process
i focus more on achieving goal

ok but those are not fundamental characteristics of a human being. you trained yourself to be that way, thus, if you want, you can deconstruct them.

this story sounds like my past.

[shubhankar]

@ajasatya How can i start enjoying process?

As you said you have gone through this, What procedure did you followed to deconstruct them.

Edited March 27, 2019 by shubhankar

[Forestluv]

@shubhankar At the personal level, this appears to be a pleasure vs. pain issue. You are still associating more pleasure with procrastination activities than productive activities. Once the scale is tipped so procrastination becomes more painful/less pleasurable than taking action, the personality will move toward taking action.

None of the tools will work at the personal level until this balance is shifted. We could give you great tools, yet if your subconscious mind-body still associates less pain/more pleasure with procrastination it will continue to procrastinate.

What helped me during a similar dynamic was to write out a list of all the pain/pleasure I currently associated with procrastination. I then made a list of all the pain/pleasure I currently associated with taking action. The key is to be honest. The conscious mind wants to think "I associate more pain with procrastination". That is a delusion. The procrastination list MUST be more powerful. Starting off, there must be less pain and more pleasure on the procrastination side, because the mind-body is procrastinating.

If it is minor distractions and minor bad habits, I don't think what I describe below needs to be intense. Yet if it is deeply ingrained procrastination and major bad habits, then I think the below needs to be intense. Ime, anyway,.

Once I made the lists and fully admitted and surrendered to the fact that I currently place more pleasure and less pain on the procrastination side - I tipped the scales. Now, I added pain to the procrastination side - I brainstormed and piled on tons of pain. All the things I was missing out on life. All the ways it was making me unhealthy. All the dreams I will never achieve. The key is to make it emotionally painful. Without engaging the emotional mode it will NOT work. The intellect is not enough. For example, I visualized my life in 20 years. I stood in the mirror and imagined myself 20 years older looking back at my current self. I imagined my life after 20 years of procrastination. My future self looked miserable. My future self looked so disappointed in me. "How could you have done this to me?". I did a variety of things like this to engage the emotional system. I made it so real I was filled with anger. I made it so real I was crying at times. This was an incredible source of motivation.

On the flip side, I made a list of goals and things I was procrastinating about. Here, I piled on the pleasure. I brainstormed pleasure from taking action. The pleasure of having a good job, the pleasure of traveling, the pleasure of being in good shape and being able to go hiking etc. Here, I also did visualizations and meditations. Again, the key is to engage both the intellectual and emotional system. I became so charged up. And not just a rah-rah kind of way. I had to emotionally experience the pleasure and joy.

This was sufficient to re-steer the ship into a different direction. There was enough juice to motivate my mind-body for about a month. Yet I needed to recharge my system with the above exercises. As well, I needed to come up with a detailed plan and measurable milestones. For example, one of my goals was to run a full marathon. I divided that up into do-able measurable components. Week 1, I run a little bit twice a week. I gradually increased the distance and frequency. I entered a 10K race and completed it. I celebrated this victory. Then came a half marathon. Then celebration. Then the full marathon and celebration. Along the way I added in stuff. I made new friends and joined a running community.

The key for the next stage is to form the daily habit. The next stage is to become that person. At first, I was a out-of-shape bozo that could only run around the block once. I felt like an impostor. I was embarrassed to tell people I was training for a marathon. I was a faker. Yet a funny thing happened along the way. I became a marathon runner. I've run over 50 marathons. I became the marathon guy. People around me asked if I could help them train for their first marathon. I trained over 10 people for their first marathon and helped them with both the physical and mental aspects of marathon training. At first, crossing the finishing line was exhilarating. Yet then, watching a friend I helped train cross their first finish line was the exhilaration. Seeing their face at the finish was amazing. Seeing their joy and the joy with their family was amazing. This became new juice for me. 

As well, coupled it with other things I wanted to do. I would run for three hours and listen to recordings of my college class lectures. Or I would listen to talks by spiritual people like Adyashanti. I got a two-for-one. I also coupled marathons with my love and goals of travel. I traveled around the U.S. and foreign countries running marathons. Amazing experiences.

And it all started when I made that list of pain/pleasure and tipped the scales. A lot more needed to be done after that, but that list was the catalyst.

And here I am 20 years later, looking at my younger self in the mirror. And my younger self is not looking at me with disappointment and for that I am grateful to my younger self for taking the action he did.

[allislove]

@Serotoninluv nice post. 

>  to write out a list of all the pain/pleasure I associate with procrastination. 

It also works with any bad habit, not only procrastination. I dropped drinking coffee by doing a similar exercise of associating pain to the habit.

"The slight edge" book may bring a lot of motivation to help to fight procrastination. The book helped me a lot to build new healthy habits: I run from 0 to half marathon, reading daily, stopped drinking alcohol, coffee, smoke weed. 
If I read it now it wouldn't motivate me I think, but at that time it was a useful resource to achieve a small milestone in my life.

[ajasatya]

4 hours ago, shubhankar said:

@ajasatya How can i start enjoying process?

As you said you have gone through this, What procedure did you followed to deconstruct them.

i started to explore different things. i started to practice yoga, i changed my diet, i met people who practiced permaculture, which allowed me to get closer to nature.

i started to actually listen to people while i talked to them. being able to make eye contact is a powerful breakthrough.

[zambize]

32 minutes ago, ajasatya said:

i started to explore different things. i started to practice yoga, i changed my diet, i met people who practiced permaculture, which allowed me to get closer to nature.

i started to actually listen to people while i talked to them. being able to make eye contact is a powerful breakthrough.

How did getting closer to nature help you?  It's been something I've been thinking about doing more of outside of the walks I take 

[ajasatya]

2 hours ago, zambize said:

How did getting closer to nature help you?  It's been something I've been thinking about doing more of outside of the walks I take 

watching the rhythm of nature... the movement of the plants, the way that the sun light spreads, the water cycle etc. there are so many amazing things happening in nature and we've lost touch with it. too much of "civilization problems" already.

[stevegan928]

@ajasatya

On 3/24/2019 at 8:28 AM, ajasatya said:

investigate the source of impatience. sit down for 20 minutes right now and do nothing. you will feel impatience arising.

yes, seriously, right now... it's now or never.

i saw your comment and thought "why not i'll try it also" i did it and kept dosing off, i would doze off and go into these different dreams about finishing something  finishing work mostly (because i just wanted to be finished with this 20 minutes). I was dreaming about clocking out or walking out the building being relieved that the day/ task is over, then i would wake up and go "fuck it's not over, how have 20 minutes not passed yet?" this happened so many times it was actually trippy, got me contemplating forgetfulness on the spiritual path. just so funny how i got completely sucked into every one of those little dreams while i dozed off. 

thank you.