Do you struggle with procrastination and lack of motivation?

Its so common. All the time I hear of people struggling with motivation.

My latest client was discussing their tactic for motivation.

They put off a task because they didn't want to do it.

This is a great strategy. Surely

If you don't want to do something then put it off. Maybe it will go away?

Usually of course, we all know it doesn't go away.

So what's your strategy?

You probably have three options:

1. Do it now

2. Don't do it at all

3. procrastinate, put it off until you cant leave it any longer and then do it last minute.

What are the pros and cons of this

1. It gets it done. Then you are free to do other things. Which is a relief.

2. Avoidance. However this can most often come back and bite you later. It will make you feel guilty....and other things ....explore further

3. This is the one my client uses. This could be a 'great' strategy - it gets it done, but at what cost? let me tell you their strategy and lets see how we can improve upon this.

My client decides that they don't want to do something. So instead of getting it done immediately they build it up to such in immense degree. They get frustrated, then angry and they add in guilt. 9for not having done it yet). Does this sounds familiar?

They decide perhaps they must limit other activities until its done - eg remove their phone - so they can't get distracted and they will get bored. Hoping that boredom will persuade them into it.

This actually doesn't work for them. This eventually leads them up to a 'tantrum'. This is exhausting. And now, only now, do they reluctantly do it.

Once the emotion is drained out of them, they move to logic. i have to do it but now I'm tired (so the tantrum made it worse).

Now i just want to get the task done.

Afterwards they are drained but relieved.

However they feel they cannot congratulate themselves on it because it didn't come from 'good'.

We spent whole 'session' on this.

My client wanted to find out what was going on here:

They wanted to remove the middle process. So that they could move straight from "a task needs doing" to "i've done the task" to "I can congratulate myself"

They had identified the problem and what they wanted to replace it with.

We did a 'visualisation' exercise for this, so that we could get to the bottom of it and start the elimination process.

and they could still congratulate themselves . the black lump has gone.

Only once it has become enormous and