Body By Design

I am sure we have all said this at some point about our fitness goals or even our life goals, something along the lines of "I will go on my diet next week" or "I will start exercising after I sort out my work issues". The question I pose to you is: why wait?

I unfortunately made the same mistakes with my goals when one day I said I was going to write up a new diet next week. My partner said why not do it now and I had absolutely no reply. Then as I thought about it, it begin to make more and more sense.

Everybody has a dose of procrastination in various sorts of degrees, but there are some people that have it in such a large dose that it actually becomes a serious problem and an obstacle for success.

"Procrastination has nothing to do with laziness"

The causes of procrastination:

• Anxiety (solution: deal with the issues that cause anxiety, seek professional help if you can’t find these issues yourself)
• Low sense of self-worth (solution: deal with the underlying motives of your low self-worth, try going into therapy)
• Some tasks are so small that your worry-radar fails to see them (solution: get organized, write down tasks, use a system like David Allen’s Getting Things Done)
• Some tasks are so big that they cause anxiety (solution: break up the big task in smaller tasks.  Again, have a look at David Allen’s "Getting Things Done").  Make sure you set realistic goals for yourself.
• Procrastination can also be a result of a lack of self control (solution: pick up the habit of meditation to improve your self control).
• Perfectionism: if you are a perfectionist, you might postpone a task because you make it bigger and more time-consuming than it actually is (solution: don’t be a perfectionist, learn to make a distinction between important tasks that need perfection and less important tasks)
• In some cases, an illness like depression or ADHD can be the cause of procrastination (solution: if you suspect this is the case, seek professional help)

I often made the mistake of waiting until other issues in my life were sorted out until I realized life will always have its issues and there is no perfect time to get started. What’s important is how you work around these issues and getting started right away is a good first step.

Overcoming procrastination is an important step on your way to success, here’s a summary of the solutions again:

• Deal with anxiety, low self-worth or other psychological issues you might have.  Speed up the process by using tools like NLP and other forms of counseling.
• Systemize your goal setting
• Read David Allen’s book Getting Things Done
• Break up larger tasks into smaller ones.
• Meditate to improve your self control.
• Don’t be a perfectionist.

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