“Why do you go at Starbucks to work” my Collage asked: 

“Because  I  always repeat the same patterns  since one week.  I replied

“As soon as i enter home I jump on  bed. Then eat something and make phone calls. 1 hour later when I think It is time to work I sit on the chair, open my laptop to be fully concentrated. But I end up  visiting you tube  and wandering on google for 2 hours” 

“Can’t you try harder”  ?  he continued

I could, but i already know that it won’t worked. 

Why not ? 

Lesson 1: When you spend 3 days in a raw without performing, you  unconsciously trigger a bad habit. It becomes more difficult to count on your willpower to escape from it. 

“An unconscious association is already set up between your place and actions you do when you procrastinate.

By the time you enter the place to work, your unconscious mind has already made up a pre-decision to not work. 

However, the results are not visible yet and because of that, you believe you still have control until the last moment when you fail again” I developped.

“Oh I didn’t  know that” my colleague wondered.  

“It reminds me of what happened  when I tried to study programming.  

“I spend weeks before coming back again despite my willingness to do so. “

“But I  had valide excuses”

Lesson 2: Your procrastinator mind is a powerful machine to generate excuses. Change your environment to change your state of consciousness. 

Yes that is the classic path. The thought’s process usually goes like this

•  «I should take some rest“  
• “I am working too much”. 
• “Let’s  come back in few minutes to continue”  

And finally  

• “I am going to sleep I will be energized tomorrow morning to continue to work on that” 

Of course I do nothing 

“But Is starbuck a better place to work compared to your house ?” My colleague insisted?

“You are making a wrong comparison dued to your perfectionism”, I replied 

Lesson 3:  Work first, then work hard before  trying to work smart. 

 When  you fail to work at a specific place many times it becomes a trap. 

The question isn’t about performing at your best anymore. IT is about restarting performing first. 

That ‘s why I go to whatever place  different from my house. After 3 consecutive days, i  come back at home. During these days outside, I  may not writte a lot but It is better than doing nothing. 

“ now I get it”  he finally agreeded.

Final words:  Build good habits outside before you  bring it inside.

The process goes like this:

Step 1 (day 1 to day 3): dismantle the unconscious association already in place.  

You achieve that by spending 3 consecutive days outside trying to just work 

Step 2 (day 4 to day 6 ): Avoid the trigger that usually brings you into the bad loop 

You achieve that by putting obstacles near the places (physical or virtual) you usually go to when you escape from working. 

• If you used to sit on your sofa or go in the kitchen, put a chair in between the odr and the sofa to remind you it is not a good idea to do so. 
• If you used to go on fakebook or WhatsApp on your phone, disactivate notifications. Then put “Working App” (word, google doc.) near to the “Distracting” App 

It reminds you that you made an agreement with yourself. This make it more difficult to reengage in the bad scenario again. 

Step 3 (day 4-6) Trigger a new first good action to restart working where  

What do you want to do as soon as you enter your home? This has to be different from what you did.

Medidation? reading? relaxing?

Whenever choice it is, you should do it immediately after  closing the door. Don’t postpone it to few minutes later.

Proceed like this To make  

• Take 3 min to visualize yourself performing this new action and then working, at least 6 hours before coming home. 
• increase your activation energy few minutes before your house . Do some pushup, some squat 

This will make you less sensible to impulses to skip the new actions. 

Exemple 

When I was visiting my parents last year, I tried to craft new articles each night  in my bedroom after diner. 

But I failed night after night . I tried to changed the way proceedeed, no result. 

That is when I start suspecting something was going wrong: an unconscious association was already in place. 

Thus, I decided to pivot. Instead of my bedroom, I  worked at the living room. 

While looking at the TV , I wrote articles with my phones. 

Yes there were Noise, Yes my parents and I were talking; but I was still moving forward. 

It wasn’t in the perfect environment for writing article but the work I achieved was far better  than doing nothing. 

I repeated this 3 consecutive nights  before restarting working in my bedroom.  

Now it is your turn 

Do you have a project where you think you lack enough informations to proceed further? 

What are you waiting for?  

I challenge you to  review it NOW and say there is nothing you can do.  Be brutal honest with yourself.

For free, I want to have a tailored solution for my specific case here

Heudou Tchihikou Aubin 

A master chronic procrastinator who chose to execute on his dreams because of frustration and self criticism