How To Procrastinate Less

This episode is about one simple rule that can help you get more things done as well as procrastinate less. 

Hello ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this is yours truly, Sayar Henry, and thank you for joining me today. I am so excited to be back with another episode.

As I have informed you guys in my previous episode in Burmese, Voice of Sayar Henry is going to be an ongoing podcast from now on, rather than being produced and published in the season format as it had been for more than a year until now. It means starting from this episode, you can expect to hear a brand-new episode every other week, or an average of 3 to 4 episodes every two months. This is the new arrangement that will help me create high quality content regularly for you guys without jeopardizing my health and quality of life. So, this is a gentle turning point for me and my listeners which is the first reason creating this episode is unique and exciting for me.

Another reason that excites me is the topic of this episode which is to minimize your bad habit of procrastination AND to maximize your productivity at the same time. Oh yeah, you heard it right. I’m going to give you a practical and actionable tip that will not only help you deal with procrastination in a different way, but also increase your productivity noticeably. Well, if you are ready, fasten your seatbelt and let’s dive in right away.

Have you ever felt like you can’t put your mind to work on an important but seemingly difficult task that can benefit you in the long run? Have you ever been in a situation in which you realize you should be working on that important task, but you keep pushing it away day after day? If that sounds like you, chances are, you have the bad habit of procrastinating.   

But don’t worry, my friend. You are not alone when it comes to dealing with this notorious habit. Most people in the world are struggling to break this cycle too — with varying degree of success, of course. One of the most common ways to deal with procrastination is to minimize the mental energy required to start working on a task by breaking it into much smaller chunks and executing one after another. The concept behind this approach is to utilize the nature of our mind that wants to follow the path of the least resistance. It works like this. Instead of forcing your mind to read the whole book, for example, you trick your mind into thinking that you’re just going to read the first sentence of the book. That way, you can easily overcome the initial friction which is keeping you to get started. Once you start reading the first sentence, it becomes much easier to read the second sentence, then the next, then the next, and so on.

This is probably the most simple and well-known approach that most productive people in the world have been practicing for decades. It’s like Personal Development 101. It’s a go-to advice to deal with procrastination.

However, this approach doesn’t deal with one of the primary factors that can lead to procrastination, which I’d like to refer to as ‘the initial baggage’. Based on my experiences and experimentation, dealing with that ‘baggage’ is as critical as dealing with procrastination.

Now let me explain what it means by using a real-life situation that many of us can relate to. Imagine that you live alone in an apartment and you’re solely responsible for keeping it clean and tidy. And let’s say that one day, your boss from work asks you to write a report which usually is a task you enjoy doing. But that night, your living room is messy, your work desk is unorganized, and your dining table is filled with plates that have not been washed since after your last meal.

Now think about this. At that moment, would you want to start working on the report? I don’t think so. If you’re like most people — I mean responsible adults — you wouldn’t want to work on that report right away knowing that your dinner plates are left unwashed, or that the desk you have to use to write that report is messy. By default, you are going to deal with these first before writing the report.

On the surface, it would seem like you are switching your mind to deal with smaller and easier tasks just to avoid working on the report. It’s very similar to how we behave when we procrastinate, isn’t it? But in this particular scenario, you are not procrastinating. You are not trying to evade the task of writing the report. You are genuinely willing to clear all the mess in your apartment so that you can work on the report later with some peace of mind. See? This is what I meant by the initial baggage — some kind of responsibilities that need to be dealt with before we can tackle an important task.

Even if you are excited to work on the report or you force yourself to ignore the mess and prepare to write, you simply cannot start doing it properly because of the baggage you are carrying in the back of your mind. So naturally, you tend to deal with these first and push the task of writing the report behind.

But the problem is, after you’re done with washing the plates or cleaning the room, you have less mental energy to start working on that report. This is where procrastination sets in. As you have spent a sizable proportion of your mental energy on dealing with the mess, the task of writing the report now appears to be much more demanding than it was before. Then your brain starts to trick you into thinking that this path is uncomfortable and that there are some alternatives you could be doing instead such as rewarding yourself for cleaning the house. Then the probability of you sitting on the sofa and scrolling down social media feeds or watching your favorite TV show suddenly becomes much higher than that of you working on the report.       

Of course, you can get out of this trap by using the aforementioned approach of breaking down big tasks into smaller chunks, but that relies heavily on how aware you are of the situation and how well you remember to use the technique. If you just slip, you will find yourself waking up from watching stupid internet videos for hours or playing a video game in the middle of the night.

And do you remember that in the beginning of this example, we assumed that you usually enjoy working on this report? Yeah? You see, even with that assumption, you are still prone to procrastination because of having to deal with the initial baggage before you can put your mind to the important task.

What if you usually don’t like to work on a report? Well, in that scenario too, you’d be dealing with the initial baggage first — only this time, you are using it as an excuse to evade the task of writing the report.

Do you see now that having to deal with such initial baggage is leading us to the trap of procrastination?

Don’t you think we would be less prone to procrastination if we don’t have to deal with all these baggage in the first place?  

In another word, preventing one of the causes of procrastination would be far more effective and beneficial than letting it happen and trying to fix it later. To be more precise, we need to stop letting little baggage become big ones that will invite procrastination.

So how do we achieve that? Well, it’s quite simple.

Whenever there is a little task or responsibility in front of you that would take less than 2 minutes of your time, do it right there and then.

If you have just eaten, wash that plate at once.

If you are done with a cup of coffee, wash it.

If your clock stopped working and you have extra batteries, put these in.

If you need to change the bulb and you have an extra bulb in storage, just fix it at once.

If your mother asks you to take out the garbage, do it right away.

Don’t wait until all these little responsibilities add up and become a huge baggage when you actually have to sit down and get serious work done. Because if you let these pile up, these will become alternative tasks that your brain can trick you into doing instead of working on the serious and meaningful tasks that can carry your life forward.   

So, I hope you apply this 2-minute rule in your daily life. Rest assured it will help you procrastinate less and feel more productive. It is simple and it is effective. But remember, my friends, dealing with these little baggage quickly should be for when you are free, not for when you are already working on something. Okay?  

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the end of this episode. If you love this podcast and want to be a meaningful part of my journey in creating educational and inspirational content for free for everyone, you can support this podcast on Patreon, or join The Library where you can learn English with me. I’ll put relevant links in the episode description. But it’s okay if you can’t afford to support. The fact that you guys are repeatedly listening to my episodes and recommending these to your friends and loved ones already means so much to me. Thank you so much for spending time with me like this, and I will see you in the next one. Goodbye for now.