129: Switching Your Mindset About Putting Things Off

<p align="center">Switching Your Mindset About Putting Things Off</p> <p>We know we should do that project or piece of work but we resist.  We may even be bold and get it into our To Do list, maybe even attach a high priority number to it, but still fail to start.  Why?  We are all pretty clever about avoiding pain and some projects have pain written all over them.  Maybe we may have to think – gasp!  Or maybe, it is going to require a lot of time and we feel too time poor to get into it.  It could be it is complex and will require a lot of effort, sapping our strength for other competing easier projects.  Hopefully, we are not just plain lazy, like Dilbert’s cartoon character “Wally” – a serial work avoider.</p> <p>Our inner dialogue could also be an issue.  We are talking ourselves out of doing the work because of what we are saying to ourselves about the prospect.  Here are some ides on changing the inner conversation to slip the chains of procrastination and assist us to get the hard bits completed.</p> <p><strong>“I need to do it perfectly”</strong></p> <p>This is a great one in japan, because Japanese culture really emphasizes doing things correctly and has low tolerance for mistakes.  We can say instead, <strong>“I will get this project started and give myself sufficient time to work on it, so it is done correctly”.</strong></p> <p><strong>“I have to”</strong></p> <p>Our feelings of resistance increase whenever the words “have to” appear.  We want to demonstrate our fierce independence by showing that project who is boss and reject that “have to” jive.  Sadly we don’t start either, so all a bit self-defeating in the end.  So let’s take back control and say instead <strong>“I choose to”.</strong></p> <p><strong>“This project is overwhelming”</strong></p> <p>This is the “eat the elephant” or “eat the live frog” metaphor – we are put off by the size or difficulty of the task at hand.  Our mind is doing a quick calculation about all the other things we have to do and one project sucking up all the time is not