Help overcoming laziness and procrastination once and for all

[Elshaddai]

This is a HUGE issue for me. Everytime I have to do something, anyhthing, that I  don't want to do or too afraid to do I just find myself putting it off all the time and distracting myself from thinking about it.

I see this pattern has been reoccuring for most of my life after graduating high school 6 years ago and spent literally years in this way of being.

It's also part of how I stumbled on actualized.org, I needed some advice!

But So far though nothing quite worked and I regress to my lazy habits. Even today I have an aversion to doing hard work and my ego to put it bluntly just bitches and moans and whines about how life is hard and terrible because of the hard work I need to do and will do.

 

Any advice would be really appriciated guys, In my opinion this vice of mine has been goning on for too long now! 

[Iksander]

I have the same problem. I've tried to fix it for about three years and the only thing that has helped is Adderall. You may have ADHD, I would suggest going to see your doctor

[Farnaby]

To be aware of it is one of the most important steps.

Your brain will always tend to the less demanding and more pleasant task, it's designed that way. If you have reinforced those pathways in the brain it's even more ingrained. 

What works for me is recognizing when I have several choices and would tend to choose the "easy" one, sit with the emotions that the other choices make me feel and try to do one of the less easy things.

With time, you increase your ability to tolerate the uncomfortable feelings.

Another thing that motivates me is to ask myself what my life will be like if I keep procrastinating, but for some people this triggers more uncomfortable feelings which makes them want to procrastinate even more. 

And lastly, cut yourself some slack when you indulge in your habits. We all do it and it's just what our brain will automatically tend to. The good thing is that we have the ability to notive when this is happening and learn new ways of doing things.

[Exystem]

I have the very same problem myself But I kind of worked out some things that improved this issue.

I can just say that you should not try to change everything at once, force yourself to take baby-steps, but do never go back after you took a step. So for example start with cold-showering in the morning and a 5 min meditation afterwards in which you appreciate yourself for doing it, be grateful for the possibility to change the direction of your life and realize that you are capable to step outside your comfort zone. Do this at least one month straight without one single time skipping it, after one month it will become a routine and consume almost no willpower anymore. You need to find out at which speed of implementing new habits works, but do not overstrain yourself! So one month each habit is a good pace.
Then you have to raise your energy levels in general. Sleep enough (&eat) regularely, get a healthy diet (!) and try to avoid sugar as much as you can, do some workout or at least some stretching in the morning (morning stretching is a very good routine to feel comfortable during the day and become more active).
You must realize that your mind has established lots of mechanisms to avoid work. Some of these are counter-intuitive, for example the belief "tomorrow I will completely change my life and work hard". It's just your mind procastinating again. The only time to change anything is NOW, so don't push the discomfort into the future.
Also, plan your next day! At the end of each day you should take notices about the things you want to achieve tommorow. Use visualization techniques just before sleeping about how you manage to do these things the next day, how you feel about it, how it perfectly works out and how your vision is already fullfilled. This is very powerful! During the night your mind implements these cognitive routes into your memory which makes the recall easier, it's learning while sleeping, an easier approach is almost impossible. At the end of each day, you should do a little meditation and be grateful for yourself, recall your achievements and embrace the feeling of beeing productive, even if you did not achieve everything you wanted to, just focus on the stuff you did achieve.

Write down your implemented habits, achievements etc. Celebrate them!

And, also important: Instead of watching movies, using your phone (by the way put it out of your sight or turn it off as much as you can!) or jerking off etc. Just do nothing! Lay/sit down and do nothing! If you feel lazy, energy deprived, ineffective, don't do instantly rewarding actions! This is poison for the mind. Rather than distracting yourself, go deep into yourself and embrace doing nothing to its full extent! You don't need to be 24/7 productive, but if you can't force yourself getting shit done, don't reward yourself for that with low-consciousness activities. Instead of this, give your bodymind the rest it needs, completely relax and restore your energies. Here's a meditation guide from Leo that helps me doing nothing when I struggle with ineffective times:

 

[Rilles]

42 minutes ago, Elshaddai said:

This is a HUGE issue for me. Everytime I have to do something, anyhthing, that I  don't want to do or too afraid to do I just find myself putting it off all the time and distracting myself from thinking about it.

I see this pattern has been reoccuring for most of my life after graduating high school 6 years ago and spent literally years in this way of being.

It's also part of how I stumbled on actualized.org, I needed some advice!

But So far though nothing quite worked and I regress to my lazy habits. Even today I have an aversion to doing hard work and my ego to put it bluntly just bitches and moans and whines about how life is hard and terrible because of the hard work I need to do and will do.

 

Any advice would be really appriciated guys, In my opinion this vice of mine has been goning on for too long now! 

What is you dont want to do? Do you need to do it? Is it necessary? Any other way to do it?

Edited July 20, 2020 by Rilles

[Elshaddai]

23 minutes ago, Iksander said:

I have the same problem. I've tried to fix it for about three years and the only thing that has helped is Adderall. You may have ADHD, I would suggest going to see your doctor

I don't think that is the issue, I think it has more to do with aversion to hard work and new experiences, but i'll check it myself to see if it's the case.

11 minutes ago, Farnaby said:

Another thing that motivates me is to ask myself what my life will be like if I keep procrastinating, but for some people this triggers more uncomfortable feelings which makes them want to procrastinate even more. 

Yeah this thought occured to me a few times, but I end up distracting myself even more to escape such thoughts as they only cause fear in me.

 Still I like your approach! it's actually similar to what my therapist recommended, to sit with uncomfortable thought and feeling and be mindful of them.

[DIDego]

@Elshaddai  I try to  do a very short post, about something complex . 

Make a list how your days are spended.

Be honest to your self.

What is fun?

What is boring?

Why?

How to make boring more interesting and meaningsful?

Do you need to remove fun stuff?

To get really bored, can make the boring stuff  enough fun, because you have removed the fun stuff?
Can you make the list with boring  #1 and do fun #2 to reward your self?

[Elshaddai]

@Exystem Wow so much advice thank you! I'll definitely work on applying everything you wrote(with baby steps of course!)

20 minutes ago, Rilles said:

What is you dont want to do? Do you need to do it? Is it necessary? Any other way to do it?

Well quite a few things:

1)Iv'e been thinking of studying for BA in  busniess managment but I have doubts whether I should even study at all even though. I am in the process of applying soon even though I'm so much of a procrastinator to even look at syllabus for the degree!

Honestly i'm sure I want to even study but I feel the pressure to start since i'm 25 and without any real academic education.

2) I really wanted to go travel when I was younger, but I don't have any friends and I was too scared to travel alone so I procrastinated on that.

3) I really used to be a bookworm when I was a as little as 3 years old and I wanted to return to being a book workworm again so I got a bunch of books(something like 40 or even more), finished only 2 or 3 since I bought them some years ago.

4) meditate more and raise consciousness.

Now I don't necisserally have to do any of the things I mentined, but I would like to grow, change and not be in this rut I feel i'm in.

[Rilles]

5 minutes ago, Elshaddai said:

@Exystem Wow so much advice thank you! I'll definitely work on applying everything you wrote(with baby steps of course!)

Well quite a few things:

1)Iv'e been thinking of studying for BA in  busniess managment but I have doubts whether I should even study at all even though. I am in the process of applying soon even though I'm so much of a procrastinator to even look at syllabus for the degree!

Set a timer for 10 minutes, look at some syllabuses, thats a great way to trick your brain into doing something hard. I can guarantee once you start you will sit longer than 10 mins. 

Honestly i'm sure I want to even study but I feel the pressure to start since i'm 25 and without any real academic education.

2) I really wanted to go travel when I was younger, but I don't have any friends and I was too scared to travel alone so I procrastinated on that.

Well, atleast you have dreams. Where do you wanna travel? Maybe you can go with a group or something. 

3) I really used to be a bookworm when I was a as little as 3 years old and I wanted to return to being a book workworm again so I got a bunch of books(something like 40 or even more), finished only 2 or 3 since I bought them some years ago.

Thats too much, dont set such big goals. One book at a time, and make sure thats the one you want to read the most. 

4) meditate more and raise consciousness.

Now I don't necisserally have to do any of the things I mentined, but I would like to grow, change and not be in this rut I feel i'm in.

Same thing here, set a timer for 5 minutes, you can meditate for 5 mins cant you? If not, try 1 minute. Dont be too ambitious. Start slowly. 

And dont beat yourself up for being lazy, our modern world is so damn distracting and the ego is extremely tricky and wants to be comfortable most of the time. 

 

[DIDego]

@Exystem Thank you, i save that text,  you describe in distilled form much of my know-how and habits, i struggle to maintain day to day, so can make use of some in a list to follow 

I struggle hard to express what i want to say in text, speaking just flow out and are no problem.

Native language are also a time consuming project, even to write longer detailed stuff.  

[Charlotte]

I always found it helpful to learn why the procrastination was occurring. In the end it was fear. 

[Rilles]

2 minutes ago, Charlotte said:

I always found it helpful to learn why the procrastination was occurring. In the end it was fear. 

Very good point. Alot of the times when I've been procrastinating it is because I will be afraid to fail, like looking for jobs and not getting any replies or just getting denied. Sometimes it feels better not to know at all. 

[Charlotte]

@Rilles Exactly, a lot of the time there's an underlying reason we cant see. 

[DIDego]

@Leo Gura Then can we download the Actualized.org app?

There we can have your voice *maybe can also be an option, that reminds us then its time to stop the procrastination and its time to continue our life.

Contemplate, meditate, watch a new juicy video about procrastination instead?

Or what this forum after a collective brainstorming reveals should be in it as a good solid ground?

Seriously, is there an option that you would like do something to make an tools or list for us all that are so fresh into this and struggle to not drown in the ocean of distraction and struggle to stay above surface on a piece of will power fragment?

[lmfao]

@Elshaddai I procrastinate decision making and seem to magically think I can make a decision later. But if I can't make a decision now, there's a good chance I can't make a decision later because later will be now when later arrives.

[Elshaddai]

On 20.7.2020 at 6:07 PM, Charlotte said:

I always found it helpful to learn why the procrastination was occurring. In the end it was fear. 

 

On 20.7.2020 at 6:10 PM, Rilles said:

Very good point. Alot of the times when I've been procrastinating it is because I will be afraid to fail, like looking for jobs and not getting any replies or just getting denied. Sometimes it feels better not to know at all. 

I totally agree, alot of it does come from my fears.

@BlackMaze Does the concept of tiny habits comes from the work of bj fogg by chance? his advice is very similar to what you are saying: start very small and work your way up.

Right now i'm trying(and failing) to do a dopamine detox which basically means no more pleasureable activties for a certain period of time.

I'm experiencing good results with it so far so maybe this is a good supplement to all the tips you guys gave me.

Wish me luck and thanks again!   

[BlackMaze]

@Elshaddai no the name of the author is stephen guise. While i don't exactly use his strategy both his books mini habits and then elastic habits gave me some aha moments, a way to think differently about habits. There is no working your way up you just adapt to your day working harder the days you can while always having a mini habit for the day that still counts as a success. I found the books a little repetitive but in my opinion they still worth a read. 

Dopamine detox is something i never tried but i also plan to in the future, i certainly need it. 

[hyruga]

Read Solving the Procrastination Puzzle or The end of Procrastination.

[kag101]

Careful not to get neurotic about this.

Will power is not the solution to all life's problems.

[Rilles]

21 minutes ago, kag101 said:

Careful not to get neurotic about this.

Will power is not the solution to all life's problems.

Very good point. Striking a balance between willpower and flowing with life is something you get better at with time. A car has a gas-pedal but also a brake.