Train Your Brain In Learning New Ways Of Thinking.

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Hello Fam! Welcome to today's edition in @cutedicta's blog. My topic today will be on "PROCRASTINATION". It's very rampant in our everyday lives, it also delays us in achieving great things. So I will teach you on how to train your brain in learning new ways of thinking. You can check my last article here, I talked on "INTEGRITY". Am pretty sure you will learn one or two things from there.

A long time, a certain man had a problem with meeting the deadline for a job offered to him, in the beginning of the year, a renowned script writer made a promise to his publisher that he was going to write a script for a movie that will be the most talked about. 

Other than writing the script for the movie, Jim used the coming year doing other projects, traveling around the world, meeting new friends and associates, thereby delaying the making of the film. Jim's publisher couldn't handle the continuous procrastination and demanded that Jim concludes the movie before the year ended, which was just 4 months away.

Jim made a plan to put procrastination to a stop. He collected his passport and clothes, took them away from his house and locked them away. He had no decent clothes to wear other than a short. Since there was no passport to travel or decent clothes to wear for outings, Jim had no interest of leaving the house or getting distracted anymore. So the only option he had was being creative and started writing. 

Fortunately the strategy worked, Jim stayed at home everyday writing the script without distractions consistently, He completed the script a week earlier to the deadline he was given. 

Procrastination An Ancient Problem:

Procrastination has been a part of humans over centuries, Even renowned writers like Jim Hugo are trapped in daily life's distractions. Procrastination is not a problem that just evolved recently, it has been there for ages, to the extent that philosophers like Aristotle named this type of trait: "AKRASIA".

Akrasia is the weakness of will; acting in a way contrary to your better judgment. When you do something else, other than what you ought to do. Simply put, I will say akrasia is when you procrastinate or when you lack self-control. It is what stops you from following through on what you set out to do.

What could be the reason Jim agreed on writing a script for a movie and abandons it for a year? What is the the reason we set goals and then never push them through?

The Reason We Make Plans, But Don't Take Action:

What is really the reason we make plans and never work on it, the only explanation why procrastination takes charge of our whole being is connected to the trait I term as "TIME EPILEPSY".Time epilepsy is when the brain values temporary incentives to future rewards.

When you set a goal to make a great change in your life, like getting a degree, writing a book, getting married or losing weight, you are automatically making plans for your future. You are picturing what you want to achieve in future, and it makes it easy when you envision the future, your brain begins to see the value of doing what it ought to do in other to get long term benefits.

It is no longer a future plan, when you are  to make an immediate  decision, and at that moment your brain is thinking about the present. It's been said by researchers that your present self actually likes immediate gratitude, not future rewards, that is why you might sleep off excited to make a positive change in your life, instead, when you wake up you are still your old self. Your brain values long-term benefits when they are in the future, but it values immediate gratification when it comes to the present moment.

Having the ability to delay instant gratification, is a good predictor of success in your life. If you can consistently do this, it will assist you to know where you are and where you want to be.

The Weapons You Need to Beat Procrastination: 

With these strategies specified below, you will be able to overcome Procrastination and push through with whatever you set out to do.

Strategy 1: Draw Out A Plan For Your Future Actions.

Just as Jim in the story described earlier, locked his passport and clothes away to enable him focus on writing, he created what I term as COMMITMENT DEVICE. This is a strategy that assists you to improve your behavior by either decreasing the obstacles or costs of bad behaviors or increasing the effort required for good behaviors.

For instance, you can stop spending quality time playing games or chatting by  deleting some games or social media apps on your phone, You can voluntarily ask to be added to the banned list at casinos and online gambling sites to prevent future gambling sprees. you can deliberately decide not to pay for cable to watch TV, or you  can curb the way you spend money by placing an emergency fund withdrawal only in you bank account. All these instances mentioned are commitment devices.

Things happens to us in different ways, but the message is the same. Commitment device can help you a great deal by you drawing out plans to curb your behavior in time, other than you having to place your hope on your willpower. Be responsible for your future actions, don't be a victim to them.

Strategy 2: Minimize The Obstacles Of Starting A New Behavior: 

The pain of doing what you ought to do at the right time is usually less than the the guilt and frustration of procrastination.  

 Most times I sit and wonder, why do we really procrastinate? Because the hard part is in starting the work, not being in the work. The obstacle that hinders us from taking action is normally centered around starting the behavior. Immediately you start, is usually less frustrating or painful to carry out the work. This is why it is often more important to build the habit of getting started when you're beginning a new behavior than it is to worry about whether or not you are successful at the new habit.

You need to put all your energy in developing  a routine and make it easy enough to get started. You can achieve this by constantly reducing the size of your unwanted habits. Don't worry about the results until you've mastered the art of starting.

Strategy 3:  Make Use Of Goals Implementation.

Implementation of goals is when you put down your intention to exercise a particular behavior in an exact time in the nearest future. For instance I will write a book for about 30 minutes from 1st September 2017 in my study at 9am.

This exercise  has recorded hundreds of successful stories showing how implementation of goals have positively impact on everything you do ranging from exercise habits to fly shots. 

It's safe to say that putting things in place ahead of time can make a great difference. But as I mentioned  earlier, implementation of goals can make you enjoy performing any action 2x to 3x more in the future. 

How To Fight Procrastination (Akrasia)

I believe it is worth it to spend time building commitment devices if your goals are important to you.

Our brains appreciates immediate rewards to future rewards. This simply shows the result on how our minds work. Given this tendency, we must have to implement insane strategies to get things done like Jim Hugo, locking away his passport and clothes in other for him to write the movie script.

The term ENKRATEIA is the antonym of AKRASIA. Akrasia allows us to fall victim to procrastination while Enkrateria refers to having power over yourself. Drawing out a plan for your future actions, Minimizing  the obstacles of starting a new behavior, making use of implementation of goals, are simple steps that you can take to make it easier to live a life of enkrateia rather than one of akrasia. 

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

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