Can’t seem to get a handle on your habit of procrastinating? Are you waiting until the last minute to study for every exam, write papers or complete weekly homework assignments? It’s time to harness your power and learn how to stay motivated all semester long!
In this video, I’m going to teach you how to physically create the motivation that will help you stop procrastinating once and for all this semester.
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I learned this technique from a man called Piers Steel who wrote the book The Procrastination Equation and combined his theory with the deep energetic and emotional work I’ve been doing for the past several years.
In the book he goes into the theory and psychology of why procrastinate and the 4 main factors that affect how motivated you will be to work on or towards something.
These are the four factors that Piers Steel says impact your level of motivation
- Expectancy [Confidence]: Do you think you can actually get it done?
- Value: How important is this assignment to you and the goals you have for your life?
- Impulsiveness [Feel Good Right Now Factor]: How easily distracted are you by things that feel better than the work you have to do?
- Delay: The further away it is the less motivated we are to get it done
Here are the factors plugged into the Procrastination Equation:
Now our goal is to have our motivation be really high so that we don’t procrastinate. Motivation means movement and action and procrastination by its very definition is the complete opposite of movement and actions.
You with me…so if having really high motivation is our goal and if you’re familiar with Math and division than you know that with any equation that involves division, the outcome, in this case the outcome we’re talking about is motivation.
The outcome is a higher number when the numerator, meaning this top portion right here is a bigger number than the denominator or the bottom number,
So if you want our outcome, in this case it’s motivation to be really high, then we need to focus on increasing our level of confidence [ability to see and believe that we can do this] and increase the value or how important this thing that we want to do or accomplish is to us.
And at the same time we need to decrease distractions and shorten our time frame.
DOWNLOAD YOUR ACADEMIC SCORECARD BELOW
So how do we do this for each of the factors?
Where does a lack of confidence come from, where does lack of importance come from, where does our aversion to displeasure come from?
It all stems from our thoughts. What we’re thinking about ourselves, the assignment, the professor, the class, our time.
And these thoughts produce an emotion in us. Depending on what we’re thinking that emotion can be one we want to feel or it can be one we want to avoid.
Either way it’s clear that if we want to increase confidence and value and decrease distractions and delay we first have to become aware of our thoughts.
And here’s exactly how to do it step by step.
Step 1: NOTICE WHEN YOU’RE PROCRASTINATING
Awareness is always the first step to changing a bad habit. Notice when you are thinking about procrastinating or actually in the process of it. Maybe you started to clean up your room when you were about to start reading your textbook. That moment, say to yourself. I’m procrastinating right now.
STEP 2: FIND OUT THE REAL REASON YOU’RE PROCRASTINATING
At the moment you notice yourself procrastinating I want you to stop and pay attention to the thoughts that are coming up about the thing you need to do. Sit down with a piece of paper and a pen.
- I’m not good at Math
- I don’t even know where to start with this
- This is going to take forever
- I don’t have time for this
- This is such a stupid assignment
- I’m going to put in all this work and still fail
- I don’t like this major
- This topic is so boring
- This is busy work
- This is too hard
- It’s too cold to study
- I have no peace and quiet to study
- I’m so confused
- I don’t get this
- I feel like I’m not making any progress
- I read all the chapters for the last exam and it made no damn difference
- I haven’t been able to pass a single class in college yet
- I’m not smart enough for this major
STEP 3: IDENTIFY THE EMOTION AND WHICH ONE THE FOUR FACTORS THE THOUGHT BELONGS TO:
Go through each of the thoughts and identify which one of the four factors from Piers Steel’s procrastination equation it belongs to. When you can figure out what is really going on beneath those thoughts, you’ll begin to get clarity around what you can do to change it.
- Is it confidence issue?
- A Value issue?
- A delay issue?
- Feel Good Now Issue?
STEP 4: IDENTIFY HOW YOU ACT WHEN YOU BELIEVE THESE THOUGHTS?
What do you do when you believe this thought about yourself or this assignment?
Seriously, do this. The only thing that produces results are actions. So what action are you taking when you let these thoughts creep into your mind? How are those actions impacting the goal you set for yourself? What results transpire?
You want clarity on what to do to stop procrastinating. You want clarity on around a study plan to create. This is your starting point.
STEP 5: IDENTIFY THE ACTION YOU CAN TAKE TO IMPACT THE FACTOR AND TAKE THE ACTION
Now that you know which part of the procrastination equation you need to work on in order to create the motivation you need, you can create a specific action plan.
And guess what? Everything I have been teaching you over the past 4 videos is built to directly help you impact these factors in the way we want.
Below I listed out which videos to watch and take action on based on where you’re struggling in the 4 factors.
Video 1: Gives value and meaning to what you’re doing
Video 2 and Video 3: Help you avoid the discomfort that makes you more prone to being distracted.
This blog post incorporates all of it but will have the biggest impact on boosting your confidence especially after I teach you how to create an academic scorecard to help you feel like your making progress and winning on a daily and weekly basis
If you want to constantly be inspired and motivated by yourself, you have to fall in love with the process. The daily actions that lead to the END RESULT of a grade on a test, a grade in a class and finally graduation.
This is real life guys. You need to understand that no one is going to give you a medal for getting out of bed and showing up for yourself. You have to celebrate those accomplishments for you. You have to love the seemingly small insignificant actions you take every day and celebrate them.
Treat these small seemingly insignificant daily actions like they matter just as much as the “A”, because they DO.
They are actually the important part of getting the A, they are the very thing that gets you the results you’re working so desperately for.
But how do we get that same satisfaction when no one is giving us a medal for showing up to lecture, starting our research, reading a chapter? All the things that on a day to day basis we feel like don’t matter that much?
You have to create that excitement for yourself and one of the ways I love to help college students do this is through creating an Academic Score Card.
We don’t take time to notice what’s different, how we’re changing in a good way. So, of course, it’s easy for us to say nothing is happening, nothing is working when you don’t take the time to really evaluate what’s happening each week.
The Academic Score Card is just a tracking system. Where you can check off every time you do something that takes you closer to the end goal that we talked about in video 2 and 3 of this goal setting series.
Every time you check it off it’s a small reward for yourself and at the end of the week you can see how much progress you’ve made, what got in the way and create a plan to do better the following week. Self-reflection questions.
You can download the Academic Score Card below.
Understand that confidence is a by-product of doing hard and challenging things.
The only way to build your confidence is to take the actions, even when it feels hard, even when it’s boring even when, even when you might fail.
That’s what builds resiliency and when you can make yourself proud like that for doing the hard things your self-confidence will naturally flourish.