This Is How You Motivate Yourself To Work Hard And Stop Procrastinating

Forget about getting motivated for a second. Motivation is simply an emotion anyway that just deals with the symptoms, but not the actual problem.

If you really want to combat your procrastination you have to get out of your own way, which means more work than just getting motivated.

Currently, the biggest reason you are procrastinating so much is because you have habitualized it. You are procrastinating out of habit and comfort rather than because you want to do something different. Most of your procrastination is running away from certain work rather than running towards certain activities.

And any attempt made to escape the habitualized rituals results in fighting your mind, combating years and years of habitualized thinking, reinforced actions and a whole network of tightly knit behaviors. That’s something most of us cannot do… at least not for long.

We try to escape and then, like a rubber band, often snap right back into place.

Instead, what we can do is to overload our mind or throw it for a loop!

If you do something your mind does not expect, if you do something new, novel and exciting, then your mind will be ‘Out of Order’ at least for a short while.

It’s more like pointing your finger into the sky yelling: “ Look over there!” at an opponent and then using that moment of surprise to get away.

In that moment of surprise you can get a lot of things done and already set up to throw your mind for a loop again when it grows accustomed to the new situation.

• Get out of your usual study/work place.
• Listen to a completely different kind of music.
• Exercise before/while working.
• Work while standing/sitting/lying down.
• Create a story as to why you have to work hard. Use your Imagination. The weirder the story/reason the better!
• Give yourself certain challenges.
• Don’t give yourself a reason and just do it, even if it goes against common sense.

Do whatever you can to keep the work you do new and exciting. This keeps your mind fully attentive to what is going on and fully engaged in the process.

Just like how you get immensely invested at the beginning of a new relationship, you can also invest by making it feel new even though it may not be!

The problem is that as soon as your mind disengages it goes into automation. When that happens you lose all control and are subject to whatever habits and rituals you have put in there in the past.

With the tips above you should be able to quickly catch on as to how to keep everything new and interesting, and therefore, keep your mind too overloaded to realize what you are doing.

When you are studying somewhere new, for example, your mind has to readjust because in the past you have only ever studied at home, meaning this new location “ Does not Compute “ and has to be placed into the system first.

This gives you full control to create the habit and rituals surrounding the new location anew.

For example, if you study hard while in a new place your mind remembers that the next time, and, if you do it often enough, your mind connects that new place to studying hard, thereby making an automated process that helps you tremendously.

However, this will only get you started.

Once you have started on your work, you have to stay with what you are doing until it is finished. Do not lose your control!

Every time you switch tasks you allow your mind some room to throw in a thought or two. Thoughts such as “Hey… what was that actors name again that played in that one movie? Where did we see them before?” or “Didn’t you want to do laundry 3 days ago? How about we do that now instead?”

And, just like that, you are out of the zone and your old habits will take control again, planting themselves in that new set-up you just have created.

When you look at how the High-Performers do their work you will see them consistently and disciplinedly working on one thing until it is completed b efore they move on to the next thing, and it seems incredibly easy for them.

The thing is: It IS incredibly easy for them. They have created a habit of being consistent and disciplined and even if they give away their conscious control of the moment their subconscious will only find one ritual to fall back on, namely the one where they are disciplined and work hard.

High-Performers don’t have to put up a lot of willpower to work hard anymore because they are so used to it and because they have created countless habits out of it that now sustain themselves.

What had to happen before they did this was them shutting up their own thoughts so they would not interrupt their work flow.

• “I will deal with you later thought. Right now is Grind-Time!”
• “Not now. Daddy/Mommy will deal with you later little thought!”
• “Shut up. Go away!”
• “Sorry, I’m busy. Whatever you want, I can’t do it. Sorry, not sorry.”

Deal with the interruptions any way you can so that you can stay on task.

This is something you have to train yourself to do and something that cannot quickly be learned. It will take consistent time and effort.

Let’s summarize:

Your mind will fall back on rituals and habits every time you do not take active control over it, which happens quite frequently. Unless you have connected enough impulses and signals to being productive, you will not be productive.

But when you switch out of your usual routines you create an opening to create a new setting that is coupled to a new habit or ritual. When this happens you have to take active control for a while and support this new cycle until it becomes automated.

After that, your mind will run the show on it’s own.

For that you have to find an opening by throwing your mind out of balance, by doing something new, and then stay consistent for a while at least. Once you have done that you are going to get better and better and you won’t need to motivate yourself to work hard… you will automatically work hard.

That all being said, at the end of the day, whether you procrastinate or work hard is simply a matter of choice.

You can work hard right now by just deciding to. In fact, every time you work or procrastinate you have decided to do just that.

Take control over that Power and do it actively starting r ight now!

Repeat after me out loud: “ I CHOOSE TO WORK HARD RIGHT NOW! I WILL WORK!”

And now exit out of Quora and get to it!

Originally published at http://quora.com.