How stop procrastinating

Procrastinating is something everybody does, some people do it for big things, some people even do it for tiny things. It can be a good thing to do, to give yourself more inspiration and creativity before starting what you are procrastinating on, but in many cases it’s a bad thing to do so let’s go over how to stop procrastinating by taking the example of learning Japanese.

Why procrastinate?

First of all, it’s difficult to find time when having a full time job and being a father of a baby. But this is basically just an excuse and I know it, yes my time is more limited, but I’m not using my time efficiently enough anyway giving me the feeling of not being able to do the things which I should. Because most of the time you will procrastinate on things you don’t find 100% important. To me learning Japanese isn’t something I’m forced to do, rather something I want to do.

My tips:

Don’t overdo it

Create a routine by starting small with a couple of minutes a day and slowly expand

Don’t try too hard

Chances are that what you are trying to do, like studying Japanese can be done efficiently. However, don’t waste too much time trying to optimize your learning routine too early on. Just start learning and spend only small amount of time on actually optimizing your study routine. It will come naturally the more you do it.

Create an environment

For studying Japanese by example, it could help a lot if you have a dedicated place without too much distractions. When you sit at that spot, or you could also use specific tools like a certain notebook and pencil you like using, that you directly have a feeling of ‘Let’s do this!’, this could help a lot with your motivation and to actually START.

Start and don’t wait

The most difficult part is starting to do something, but you probably already found out that the moment you start doing something, it goes automatically and you don’t really feel too bothered by it anymore. Even if you feel very troubled, try to sit down and slowly start doing it, and you’ll find yourself finishing your task before you know it.

Motivation

If you can not find yourself to start at all, try to think about what motivated you in the first place to do it. This may be difficult for certain things, especially if what you are procrastinating is something you are forced to do like studying for a test in school.

However, even for those times you can get motivation to do it by thinking about the consequences of not studying properly and failing the test. Failing means bad grades, re-doing tests, wasting more time by having to study again and spend time on taking the test again. Getting a bad score may also work negatively on your overal mood, decreasing your fun whilst playing games or doing other things you may like doing.

If you are procrastinating on something you personally want to achieve, think back to what things made you motivated in the first place. For me it was my first trips to Japan. I often look back to pictures and videos of my first trip, or watch documentaries about Japanese history to get my motivation going again.

Motivation fades

Motivation is something like water in a lake, it can slowly drain and dry up. It’s important to keep the river flowing to keep the lake full. However, something the spring where the water for the lake comes from stops working and then it is time to really consider moving on. Look up the sunk cost fallacy.