Callisto

Ultimately, the only way to overcome avoidance is to manage your feelings. If you want to stop procrastinating, you have to learn how to cope with the unpleasant emotions associated with doing a task, be willing to feel unpleasant emotions in the future, and accept the reality that you may sometimes regret your decisions. That last part might actually be the hardest. We want things to be perfect and we want to succeed, and sometimes, it feels like we can prevent failure by not taking action. But inaction is its own form of failure. When you don’t take action, you deprive yourself of the opportunity to succeed, or at least to learn.

Don’t skip over the “schedule” part. These are things that will help you move toward your goals but don’t necessarily have a deadline. Examples are learning new skills, starting a diet or exercise routine, improving your relationships, self-care, reading, budgeting, or taking a class.

The solution: Commit 100 percent, watch yourself follow through, build your confidence along the way, and build your motivation to continue.

Making choices that are more consistent with your long-term goals will be difficult at first, but it will become easier once you gain momentum.

A related time-keeping approach is to do a task for just five minutes.

So, you’ll commit to working on a task for just five minutes. At the end of that time, decide whether you’d like to commit to another five minutes or move on to another activity.

Continue until you decide you would prefer to move on. Initially, five minutes may be all you can tolerate. But as you practice this strategy, you’ll likely be able to extend the time you engage with difficult, tedious, or unpleasant tasks. And once you’ve got the ball rolling for five minutes, you’ll amaze yourself at how much easier it gets to keep going.

USE A REVERSE DEADLINE

you want to learn a computer programming language, but frustration and a fear of never becoming proficient are holding you back. Try setting a reverse deadline for yourself that includes an amount of time you are willing to commit to practicing coding—maybe 30 minutes a day, or an hour a week.

CONNECT THE TASK TO YOUR GOALS