A few weeks ago I carried out a little survey to see what most interested readers of this blog. The topic of procrastination was clearly the big winner, but what surprised me was that other topics were very undervalued, in particular problem solving techniques and high productivity techniques, so I’m going to slap a few wrists!

You can never solve a problem by focusing solely on the problem itself. It is not enough to be against something, you also have to be for the flip side. This is essential. Without a replacement behavior to focus on you will continue with your old behavior. The flip side of procrastination is high productivity and a vital component of that is your collection of problem solving techniques. So study the categories of Productivity and Problem Solving. You will find some very useful help there.

However, one respondent mentioned that a primary frustration was an inability to consistently overcome procrastination without slipping back into old ways, so I think that the deeper issue for most people is the emotional battle that keeps occurring of which procrastination is the end result.

On a fundamental level, you procrastinate because you want to do things that you find too difficult (if not downright impossible) to do at the moment that you desire to have the final result.

This inability generates some level of painful negative emotion, which discourages you and your subconscious immediately responds by seeking out alternative behaviors and actions that can be indulged in immediately that are either less painful or, even better, pleasurable.

To feel good about the thing that you want to do, but which is generating negative emotion, then you have two options. One is to give up on that desire, either for good or to accept postponement until another time. Once you remove that desire from your mind then it ceases to generate negative emotion. The second option is to make the objective both possible and easy to do.

For every desire that you wish to turn from intention into reality there are two main parts: a mental part and a physical part. The mental aspect is required to think through the task so that you break it down into separate parts. Each part should be small enough to do in one session of effort using the physical aspect, which is to use capabilities that you already have.

If you resist immediately take action after you have analyzed, solved and planned things in this way then there may be several causes:

Biting Off More Than You Can Chew: Once you put a desire into your consciousness, an immediate assessments starts as to whether you have fulfilled the desire or not. For a long as the answer is ‘No’ then negative emotions are generated. The pain of negative emotions drives us to take action immediately but if what you want is just not physically possible there and then, then you are sunk. You have created an engine of pain and negativity for yourself. You must plan out the sequence of small tasks that will lead to eventual fulfillment and then focus your consciousness on the first task alone and accept postponement of the full desire until the full process is completed.

Lack of Organization and Preparation: You know what to do and you know how to do it but you resist taking action because you have not organized and prepared the resources that you need to take immediate action. You will often find that you have to make organization and preparation a full and distinct task. Otherwise you will scheme and plan continuously without bridging the practical gap to make the task possible.

Indecision Over What To Do: You don’t take action because you are not sure what to do overall, or else you are not sure how to do something. This indicates that you lack precision in defining the objective. When you specify with great clarity exactly what you want then the way to create that becomes much, much easier to work out. This removes the indecision of not knowing what to do overall. Note: If in doubt then speculate.

Indecision Over How To Do: You don’t take action because you are not sure how to do something. Ultimately, you can only do something in physical reality that you have the motor skills to do with your physical body. You must work out a process for getting what you want that you can personally do. Otherwise it is physically impossible for you to get what you want. Sometimes this requires developing new abilities and so you have to postpone fulfillment of the objective until that is done. Sometimes the best thing to do is to outsource the activity to someone who can do it for you. Note: If in doubt then speculate.

The Result Is Not Desired: Sometimes you have a task that is possible to do but you know that it will lead to a final result that is unwanted, e.g. more work, more pressure, more obligation, make or break failure. This type of resistance requires some deep thought. It could be that you are heading down a path that you are truly not comfortable with. You must think the whole thing through from a long-term strategy point of view and decide whether to give up or whether to build the necessary mental and physical abilities that will allow you to cope with the results of your success.

A Conflicting Belief: You have a desire to get a result but you also have a belief that tells you that you cannot have what you desire. For example you might have a desire to earn a lot of money but you might also have a belief that all people with a lot of money are dirty rotten scoundrels. You have a desire that drives you forward to find ways to get more money and a belief that tells you that if you do this then you will get a result that you don’t want. A belief is just a guess at the mechanism at work between a cause and an effect. The only way to overcome the belief is to test it and seek proof of whether the belief is properly true or not. You can find extensive help to overcome beliefs here, here and here.

Too Much Uncertainty: You might be clear about what you want and how you might do it, but you might still lack certainty over whether it will all work for you. This is especially true when success is dependent upon external elements beyond your control. You can remove uncertainty by making as much of the process controllable by you as possible. Where uncertainty still remains then you can carry out research to see if anyone has done this thing before and made getting desired results systematic with a very high probability of success. Your greatest ally in removing uncertainty is understanding. Through knowing the cause and effect of systems as much as you can you have a much better chance of removing uncertainty and random results and instead create the ability to predict results with a high likelihood of success.

Always remember that it is your desires that potential emotional conflict that results in procrastination. The only way to deal with that conflict successfully is to manage your desires very carefully, especially at the point where you put an idea into your head to do something. If that desire cannot immediately be carried out physically then you will experience a negative emotion.

You can use willpower to consciously force yourself to take action and attempt to solve the mental aspects of problem-solving and organization on the fly but that only works for relatively simple tasks. You must make the task possible to do in both the mental and physical aspects in order to succeed and generate satisfaction. The bigger the goal, the more effort you need on the mental aspects of planning, preparation and organization. The more difficult the goal, by which I mean the more it goes into unknown territory for you, the more effort you need on the mental problem solving and skill building aspects (which often, but not always, requires developing new physical aspects of your capabilities as well).

If you are ambitious and desirous of doing better and better things (which describes the readership of this blog, I think), then get used to living with frustration, only recognize that it’s just a warning sign that you need to either expand your current level of abilities or that you need to think things through better. It does not mean that you are no good or incapable on an absolute level.

You remove the resistance to doing things (procrastination) by making those things physically possible to do. The book, ‘Make Things Possible’ is solely dedicated to that end.