Try it and create a new habit.
Procrastination is often a common habit among high-achievers who might also struggle with overwhelm and perfectionism while building businesses.
It’s important to first understand why you procrastinate, so that you can stop beating yourself up for it.
Once you’ve understood why, it’s time to take the next step and start dealing with this habit in a way that’s actually very doable, rather than just trying to pressure yourself into overcoming it.
So often, as procrastinators, we wind up finding ourselves staring at a long to-do list, much of which has been carried over from the day, week, month or even year before, we’re overwhelmed before we even actually accomplish anything.
Brian Tracy, a best-selling author and productivity expert, shares that your eventual success depends on your ability to learn to choose your most important task in any given day.
He calls it “eating your frog,” based on the Mark Twain quote:
“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first. Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
But I’m going to simplify it even further, because if you’re a chronic procrastinator, you might not even be confident that you can get this done, and getting some early wins are key to building up your trust in yourself that you can overcome this habit.
I recommend that you choose one thing, anything business-related, it doesn’t have to be the most important thing, set a timer on your phone, and just do your one thing for five minutes. Just five minutes. Seriously. If you want to, you can do it for longer, but you don’t have to. Watch what happens and how you feel once you do it.
Now, it’s important that your one thing be simple and accomplish-able in five minutes, especially if you’re just starting from a place of being stuck or feeling overwhelmed.
Choose something simple and straightforward and that shows visible progress, like “pick a template for my website” or “purchase my domain name.”
If you need to create your package or pricing, don’t say “I’m going to do it all, and it’s going to take 5 minutes and be PERFECT!” You’re setting yourself up for disaster and disappointment.
Instead, try something like, “I’m going to decide the length of my program,” or “I’m going to decide what price would feel really good to get paid right now.”
That’s it.
This hack changes a procrastinator’s life, for good.
One woman in my private Facebook group used this hack to set up a whole new system she’d been wanting to use in her business because she knew it would save her tons of time, but had been procrastinating on for months because she felt like she could never find the time to sit down and implement the whole thing at once.
In just five minutes a day, she knocked the implementation out and started reaping the rewards in increased headspace and time!
I’ve seen whole books get written this way, businesses launched and grown, clients acquired, funnels built, and money made. What do you you want to use it to accomplish?
Go do one thing for five minutes, while you’re feeling inspired, right now!
Then, acknowledge to yourself that you’re indeed moving forward because you did one important thing today, and congratulate yourself! Start building positive reinforcement, faith and trust in yourself that you are making progress and that today, you’ve done what you needed to do.
Now share below:
What do you think of this hack? What’s “one thing” you could do for five minutes today?
If you want some support and accountability for overcoming procrastination so that you can grow your business, grab Christine’s free workbook, Top 5 Things To Do To Get Your First Or Next Client, and connect with her in her private Facebook community, Life With Passion Society.
Originally published at www.huffingtonpost.com on May 13, 2017.
Originally published at medium.com