A Trick to Help Beat Procrastination

I recently read a blog post about an amazing trick to beating procrastination heres the trick

It’s too easy to fall into an infinite pool like scrolling through twitter, browsing instagram and the like. Often we find ourselves doing it without really thinking, and then before we know it, an hour’s gone and we’re feeling terrible about ourselves.

But there’s something we can do about this - when we notice ourselves doing something useless (like scrolling through Twitter or Instagram), we can ask ourselves “What do I actually want to be doing right now?”

In some cases, the answer might well be “I want to be aimlessly scrolling through Twitter”, in which case continue my good friend. You’re winning because you’re being intentional about how you spend your time.

But in most other cases, I suspect the answer might be “I probably don’t want to be scrolling through Twitter right now. Instead I want to be writing my daily journal”. And then, having had that thought, we’d be 10x more likely to stop scrolling twitter and instead do the thing we actually want to do.

I really like this tactic because it reminds us that what we do with our time is entirely within our own control.

“I just can’t stop myself from going on Twitter” is a myth. It’s not heroin. We can simply choose to not waste time on it, if that’s what we want. Sometimes we just need a little nudge, to remind ourselves that we’re in control.