𝘽𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙘𝙧𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣

SARAH SARWAR

24101325

Procrastination is the invisible barrier that hinders your growth and sabotages your chance of living a successful and jovial life. It is the act of putting off important tasks till the very end, which often leads to stressful situations.

Now, what if I told you I was once a master procrastinator? But most importantly, I'll tell you how I have successfully brought an end to this vicious cycle. Today, I will be discussing how dopamine levels can improve motivation and how anxiety may lead to procrastination. Two of the star topics of today, as it has helped me curve out a path of freedom from procrastination .To top it all off, I'll discuss how a growth mindset will help you rise from any sort of flaw that you might have.

Let's see what an obesity specialist says about this. He describes our dopamine levels, using a rather unique analogy of water, tray, and waves. Let's take your dopamine reserve to be a tray filled with water, and let's create waves in that tray. Whenever waves are in play, the concept of peaks and troughs becomes very clear in our minds. The probability of completing a work in time highly depends on the pleasure, and sense of satisfaction you feel while doing it. Guess who's responsible for this feeling of pleasure? It's your dopamine!

When your dopamine is at its peak, you feel a burst of energy that makes you feel happy and hence this creates an enjoyable experience. On the contrary, when you experience a dopamine trough, your mind and body both experience a drastic drop in energy. In the middle of both these extremes, is the baseline.

This baseline motivates us enough to do day-to-day life activities. Now imagine, what if your baseline was higher than usual? Just how easier would it be, to get yourself to start a difficult project?

Andrew Huberman, in his podcast about leveraging dopamine levels, discusses natural things we can implement in our lives to increase this baseline and allow us to remain motivated to a moderate degree throughout the whole day.

He discusses how

• Getting morning sunlight
• Low-intensity workouts, every 4-5 days of the week
• Cold showers ranging from thirty seconds to a minute

Will put you in an alert state for the rest of the day. He also emphasizes the importance of getting enough sleep every single day, to heal and restore this magical chemical you have, right at the grasp of your hand. These are easy yet effective habits you can incorporate in your everyday routine, to ensure that your dopamine reserve is higher than usual.

 If I were to highlight a particular method that I have implemented in my life, it's easily one of Andrew's methods, that he mentions in various videos in his channel. To make it easier for you, here's a concise and paraphrased version of this method:

When you find yourself lacking motivation and feeling lazy, you can try doing a task that is more challenging than the one you were previously working on. This will get you moving and cause a surge in your dopamine levels, making it easier for you to transition back to the task you need to complete.

Now that we have discussed the pleasure aspect of procrastination, let's also dive a little into how anxiety may be the culprit, that drives a person to procrastinate.

Chronic procrastinators have a heightened sense of anxiety. A mental dialogue that often holds them back, sounds a lot like "How will I start a work, that I don't even know how to finish?" The mere thought of taking on a moderately difficult task scares them away, and puts them in a paralyzing state.

For this, your holy grail would be the five-second rule.

Mel Robbins explains the rule as,

“The 5 Second Rule is simple. If you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must
physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill it. The moment you feel an instinct or a desire to act on a goal or a commitment, use the Rule.
When you feel yourself hesitate before doing something that you know you should do, count 5-4-3-2-1-GO and move towards action.”

The five second rule, not only allows you to push past your brain's natural tendency to protect you from hard tasks but it also gives you a sense of authority over your own mind. It gives you the liberty to move past that anxious state.

Often times procrastinators may criticize themselves to a point where they paint themselves as lazy people. Be aware of labelling yourself as someone, who you aren't. To me, procrastination is simply a cover-up for countless other underlying problems. From which, I have discussed two of the most prominent ones above. Persistent conditions such as this, require deep-work such as shaping your own identity and carefully picking out ways to overcome your hurdles.

Only if I had wrapped myself within the identity of somebody who "procrastinates", I'd never reach out to solve it. I'd simply believe, that's how I was built. Have the courage, to have a mindset that gives you time to evolve into the plethora of beautiful versions of you, that you are yet to become.

Learn to say, "Not yet", instead of labelling yourself with negative words such as "lazy", "inconsistent", or even someone who simply doesn't have any ambitions. You don't know how to have a healthy, balanced diet? You can learn how to do it! You don't know how to control your anger? There are ways to truly manage it. Your mental hurdles are never something, that you are sentenced to for a lifetime.

"Some of the biggest gifts of your life, will come wrapped in sandpaper"

 

A saying, that struck my soul when I came across Lisa Nicholes' advice on making the most out of our disadvantages. Your conviction and convenience cannot ever live on the same lane. You and I, both have the power to conquer our mental battles.
My habit of procrastination was not a curse after all. Similarly, it does not have to be a curse for you. You can use this very reason, to learn deeply about how your mind works and tap into the various scientific ways of truly optimizing your productivity levels.

To put it simply, if a problem is repetitive, it must have an underlying cause. Whether the problem is big or small, it is essential to take a step back, assess yourself, and be honest enough to work on those parts of yourself. There is a world out there, which is ready to embrace you with open arms and teach you ways to be a much better version of who you are. So, what's holding you back? Isn't it high time that you leap?