Beating Procrastination By Timely Actions And Personal Responsibility

How to stay motivated, inspired, and productive with a simple mindset shift

Photo by Pablo de la Fuente on Unsplash

The best lesson I learned from my parents was to take full responsibility for my actions. This approach has been one of the essential transformational factors in many aspects of my life.

By using this principle, I refrained from blaming people for the consequences of my life. Blaming manifests as a default mode for our mind. It is effortless to blame people or processes for undesirable outcomes. The appropriate challenge is to take full responsibility, including in the face of difficult situations.

Whenever my brain went to the blame mode for any reason, I learned to make a special effort to stop myself. I reframed the situation and switched my perspective to find gratitude points.

In hindsight, most of the problematic points and undesirable situations for me turned into blessings in disguise. This awareness changed my mindset, and it helped me become more mindful, grateful and accepting.

Many intelligent and emotionally mature business people and entrepreneurs enjoy trying unconventional approaches only by taking a personal risk. They refrain from blaming consequences when their trials don't work.

Instead of blaming an individual, a book, a process, or a company, intelligent people chose to change their path and take responsibility for their results.

It is necessary to point out that I don't recommend anything to anyone, but instead, I love sharing my experiences and narrating them naturally, without hype or bias. Even though personal sharing of facts may put me in a vulnerable situation as a writer, they are still worth sharing.

There is always the risk that some people may try to take advantage of other's vulnerability. We need to be aware of the risks and share them using logic and the proper context.

Now I want to touch on taking timely action related to personal responsibility.

Living in the moment mindfully is considered to be a success factor in personal and professional life. Actions happen in the moment we live, not in the past and not in the future.

Many disciplines such as business, commerce, psychology, religion, economy, medicine, engineering, technology, and art teach us to focus on the moment to create successful products and services.

Successful outcomes are created by taking immediate actions for the things that genuinely matter. This principle applies to prioritizing tasks requiring completion.

Procrastination is common and natural. It is critical to learn how to deal with procrastination. From experience, an effective way to deal with procrastination is noticing it and taking immediate action.

For example, as soon as we see our mind go to the default procrastination mode, we can have a friendly conversation with ourselves and kindly remind ourselves to turn to action mode. Most of the time, our brain obeys when approached nicely and with care.

A straightforward implementation of this solution is that if we believe the task at hand can be done in a few minutes, we should not leave it to a later time.

However, if a task in our list requires further analysis and deeper thinking, we can plan an appropriate time to undertake it. We can take action based on the plan and the task's priority.

Suppose the job cannot be completed at a specific time. In that case, the best approach is to deconstruct the task into smaller chunks and tackle them in priority order for each identified portion.

Working on smaller tasks and completing the high priority ones earlier can motivate us. Experiencing the success of completing small tasks, our brain can reward us with good-to-feel hormones. We start feeling enthusiasm instead of withdrawal or procrastination symptoms.

Small gains can give us motivation and inspiration. When we are motivated and inspired, we can easily and quickly move out of our comfort zone. Successful people operate at stretch zone. Being in the stretch zone allows them to create their future by taking timely actions and personal responsibility for their actions.

Being an action-oriented person helps us to become more courageous. Despite our fears in scary situations, we can consistently produce with the help of timely actions.

Taking timely actions has been a critical tool for me to overcome my fears. Taking timely actions can generate courage. Delayed efforts can intensify fear and may even paralyze us by demanding us to stay in passive mode.

Before starting to write this article, I felt natural anxiety and slight fear leading to procrastination. As a habit, I asked why I felt this way at that moment. There was not a particular answer, but I felt the anxiety and concerns slowly disappear.

Then I reinforced with more powerful questions: What could be the risk and what could be the worst-case scenario for writing this piece? The only risk I came up with was being misunderstood and judged by the reader. And the worst case was the reader would not choose to read my content. It was not a deadly consequence, so my anxiety reasonably disappeared, and I started writing.

Sharing ideas, opinions, and personal experiences always puts the creators in a vulnerable position, but we cannot create, influence, and grow without showing our vulnerability.

By having this robust self-conversation in a gentle way, I overcame my anxiety, fear and procrastination. I wrote this piece in a flow state and in my stretch zone with ease. I hope you read it in your stretch zone to understand these simple yet powerful life lessons. Reading these transformational points can make better sense in the stretch zone. If readers read a piece of content in their comfort zone, they may miss the critical points and important messages.

To conclude, actions by taking personal responsibility is a critical success factor. One of the most effective ways to eliminate procrastination and gain motivation and inspiration is taking actions timely and achieving small gains. Each small growth can give us more energy and keep the ball of motivation rolling. When motivation kicks in, procrastination naturally gets silenced or entirely disappears.

Thank you for reading my perspectives.

Follow me to see more articles like this. Sharing my experience is a passion for me.

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