Name: How You Can Stop Procrastinating Forever
Uploaded: 2021-04-17T21:01:30.000Z
Duration: 7 min 32 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

By the end of this video, you will learn how to stop procrastinating once for all.

Present continuous

If you're watching this video, there was something else you're supposed to do

but then you decided to spend five minutes on Facebook or YouTube

and somehow you ended up watching this video.

It has been probably an hour or two since you have decided to spend only five minutes.

I wonder what kind of five minutes are there.

Of course you are not planning to waste two hours of your time,

but then you wanted to know who liked a recent picture on Instagram or Facebook

or maybe you wanted to know if I have uploaded a new video and that's how it all started.

In fact, it always starts like that and then you end up wasting your whole day doing nothing.

In short, we just procrastinate, and in this video, we'll see how procrastination works

and I will show you a practical way to defeat it.

And please, please, for God's sake, don't procrastinate on watching this video till the end,

Just be patient for the next few minutes and I promise you that this is the only video you will ever need to watch about how to end procrastination,

because you will find whatever you are looking for.

Before we move on, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and the bell besides it to never miss another video.

Let's first understand how procrastination works in the first place.

It tries to avoid anything that will force him to work by promising that you will get a better opportunity in the future,

for example, if someone would give you a hundred bucks now or two hundred bucks after a year.

What would you choose? Of course, a hundred bucks now, because your brain starts telling you:

imagine all the great things you can do with this money right now,

and if you live until next year, you will make more than that.

You can take that money now and invest it, whatever.

If you could get this money now, you will certainly get it next year as well.

Your brain will always choose short-term gains over the long-term gains, even if they are hundred times more.

The same thing happens in every other situation that you are procrastinating.

But this time, it's not about the hundred bucks,

but it's about your time or your life, because each time you procrastinate, you waste your time.

When you want to start going to the gym, you always decide to do it tomorrow.

Because today you're tired, you don't feel like exercising.

You will find thousands of reasons where it's better to do it tomorrow

Your brain will give you a short-term solution but in the long run you are messed up.

Let's say you want to start working, your brain realizes that you're about to put some energy,

so it starts looking for things you enjoyed the most

and starts reminding you about them over and over until you do that.

So, if your brain realizes that you enjoy spending your time on Instagram,

it will tell you - Why don't you check who liked your recent picture on Instagram?

If it's YouTube, why don't you watch a video to free up your mind and you will be able to focus better on your work?

Or why don't you get first a cup of coffee? It will certainly keep you awake.

Or why don't you take a nap? It will make you feel fresh and you  will work faster.

Your brain will always give you reasons why it's better to do it in the future, so the idea is not to let your brain to trick you.

I love coffee myself and every now and then my brain is trying to convince me to make a cup of coffee as I'm working on this video,

But luckily, I know a practical way how not to let my brain to trick me,

which I will be sharing with you in this video right now

The first step is to break up the task into small pieces.

Remember that your brain is trying to avoid a lot of work,

so when the task looks so big that it literally needs a lot of work

and you don't even know where to start, your brain will automatically start coming with every reason to avoid it.

So, you have to trick your brain and let him know that you're not going to do anything tough,

you're simply going to do a simple task that requires 15 to 20 minutes maybe.

You're not going to spend a lot of energy or time there.

That's why when you break up the task and focus only a small piece of it, your brain isn't going to bother about it.

The same thing happens when you try to wake up in the morning.

Your brain is constantly telling you - the day is going to be too long and tiring,

you have to take shower, drive to your job, work for hours, attend meetings...

and another five minutes of sleep isn't going to make a difference.

Now imagine if you focus only on a small piece of it.

And if I feel sleepy after that I'll get back to sleep and you will find it much easier to get up,

Because your brain isn't going to come up with another excuse.

It's like when you wake up in the middle of night and you want to go to the bathroom.

It's pretty simple to wake up at that time because you know you'll get back to sleep after that.

So, once you're done with the shower, tackle the next problem and so on and so forth.

I just tell myself that I'm only going to exercise for ten minutes, and I really mean it.

and I am done with the ten minutes of training, it gets much easier to stay for another twenty minutes.

and you're procrastinating to study, instead of focusing on studying the entire textbook,

Focus on one part at a time and forget all other chapters like you don't even have to study them.

Just make sure that you break them into little small pieces

that your brain won't feel that you do need a lot of hard work there.

And that drives me to the second step, which is create time blocks.

Remember the example if you would choose a hundred bucks now or two hundred bucks after a year?

What if it's a hundred bucks now or two hundred bucks after 30 minutes?

Of course you will choose two hundred bucks after 30 minutes

because another a hundred bucks is a good reward for waiting 30 minutes.

The same thing you can do with other things.

Just decide to study or work for 30 minutes regardless of whether it's enough or not,

and then reward yourself with five minutes of break and then you can check your Instagram, Facebook, watch a video, whatever.

Remember that within these 30 minutes you cannot do anything other than working, whether it is checking your phone, talking to someone else.

Once you learn to stay focused for 30 minutes, upgrade it to 45 minutes and eventually to an hour or more.

And lastly, write down your distractions.

Your brain is a master at reminding you of all the things you have to do once you start working.

I mean, you could not even think about them,

and now suddenly, the moment you start working, you remember everything you had to do for the past week:

you have to send that email, you're supposed to call Sam and ask him about the finals.

You promised your mom to give her a visit. What about the clothes you wanted to wash yesterday?

You start remembering things that you would not otherwise.

Some of them are really important, and you have to do them, but a lot of them are just there to distract you.