Procrastination is the avoidance of doing a task that needs to be accomplished. Sometimes, procrastination takes place until the "last minute" before a deadline. This can affect our lives in a lot of ways.
This simple rule will help, even if you do not want to tackle the task at all.
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What's the rule
All of us sometimes can not bring ourselves to get down to business. Many people in top organizations also face this problem. For such situations, you must workout a rule of five minutes.
If you do not want to do something, promise yourself to do this for only five minutes. Most likely, after these five minutes you will do everything to the end.
Why it works
"Procrastination is usually caused by fear or conflict," says Christine Li, a clinical psychologist specializing in procrastination. Even when we want to do business, the fear of failure, criticism or stress forces us to fight with ourselves. We do not want our fears to become reality. "Because of this conflict, it seems that it's impossible to start work," Lee continues. "It explains why we sometimes procrastinate, even if it's meaningless."
The rule of five minutes liberates us. It seems, you can briefly plunge into the project and at any moment to come back out. You have the right to review your decision in five minutes. This gives a sense of control over the situation. It seems that you decide, and do not feel pressure from outside.
Another rule of five minutes reduces the costs of activities. For example, emotional (fear, anxiety), alternative (what you miss, doing this business), energy (how tedious it is). Motivation to do business increases when costs are reduced.
Why do we continue to work after the first minutes?
Our idea of how unpleasant the task is is often wrong. Starting a business, we usually treat it more positively than we expected.
For example, the researchers compared expectations and actual performance of students. Why do Girls Really Experience More Anxiety in Mathematics? The students believed that they understand mathematics worse than their fellow students. But gender differences disappeared when scientists evaluated the ability and anxiety of all students during a math test. Representations of female students were not confirmed. Their feelings during the test did not meet negative expectations.
It's not just that the task is not so unpleasant. When we start work, we often get into the flow state. In it, we are completely immersed in the matter and forget about everything around. Time flies by unnoticed. But most of the time we are immersed in it when we are engaged in complex cases. For example, we force ourselves to do as much as possible in just five minutes. But even such routine tasks as washing dishes or checking spelling in the text can immerse in the flow.
The rule of five minutes gives us the feeling that we control our work.
After five minutes, the big project will still be great. But when you have overcome the first threshold - the reluctance to begin, it will cease to seem impossible.
Thanks for reading. Hope you find the article useful.