4 Reasons You Procrastinate

Everyone talks about making sacrifices for your goals - whether it’s cutting out bad habits, people holding you back or going out on a Saturday night.

But how often do you avoid the most important and most obvious sacrifice?

The main sacrifice that must be made.

In fact, the only sacrifice that if you don’t make it, your other sacrifices are basically pointless.

How often do you avoid sacrificing now for the work in front of you?

How often do you procrastinate and put things off?

You’d be surprised how common it is for entrepreneurs, who know the importance of doing the work to just… not do it.

So today I’m going to show you the 4 reasons why you procrastinate and what to do about them.

First, let’s look at what causes procrastination - otherwise, you’ll not be able to fix it.

Almost all cases of procrastination are caused by 1 thing.

A lack of clarity.

When you lack clarity, you end up with more options or paths you could take.

Some of these paths will be easier than others and offer instant gratification.

Hence, if you’re not clear on which path to take, you’ll take the easiest path.

This is quite simply human nature - we’re designed to conserve energy to maximise survival, the easiest path requires the least energy and so without a reason or assurance on what path to take, you’ll always take the easiest one.

But the idea of clarity goes deeper than this.

If you want to stop procrastinating and putting off the work you know you need to do, you need clarity on 4 things;

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• Clarity on what you need to do

This is the simplest and most obvious pre-requisite for taking action.

If you don’t know what you need to do to move toward your goals, of course you’re going to put the tasks off.

So get ridiculously clear on the 1-3 tasks that will create progress in your business.

For 99% of businesses this will be around getting traffic, closing clients, and fulfilling clients - or improving how you do these.

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• Clarity on why it’s important

Even if you know the tasks you have to do, if you’re not 100% clear on why you need to do them you’ll put them off for another task you deem more important or more enjoyable.

So get clear on why and how the tasks you have to do add up to your goals.

Realise, internalise and understand how the work is the only way to achieve your goals and if you want to achieve your goals, the work is the only thing that matters.

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• Clarity on when you’re going to do it

It’s all well and good knowing what tasks to do and why they’re important - in fact, most entrepreneurs are good at this.

But if you don’t get clear on when you’re going to do a task, you’ll just “do it later” or “do it after this” or “do it tonight” - and guess what…

It never gets done.

So create clarity on when you’re going to do it by scheduling your tasks in order of priority and planning your day.

A pro tip: The busier you are, the more detailed you will need to be with your plan.

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• Clarity on how you’re going to do it

Finally, if you don’t know how to do a task, it’s another reason to put it off.

So create SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for every task you do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

This way, when it’s time to do a task you just have to follow the SOP - making it faster, easier and a more consistent quality.

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Yes, these are simple. But all the best things are - and these 4 things will fix the majority of your procrastination.

But if you’re still procrastinating after implementing these 4 things it’s because you have a deeper underlying issue in your identity and belief systems.

So if you want to shift your identity, rewire your beliefs and unlock peak performance, so you can take both you and your business to the next level, click here.​

— Ross
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