How I Stopped Procrastinating (After Years of Failed Attempts)

For someone who has written a book on procrastination, I guess I could come across as a guy who has it figured out. I’m Mr. productive. Super organized and always on point.

Therefore, it sometimes comes as a surprise to people to learn that procrastination was one of the biggest problems I faced in my own personal life.

Here I talk about what it was like living with this issue, the problems I faced, and the road to eventually overcoming it.

Why I suffered from the issue

Essentially, I suffered from procrastination because I had very low self-confidence and self-esteem. Thus, this part of myself that felt itself unworthy looked around my life to see what it could use to validate its own existence.

And it found my personal productivity. This part of my life became ample evidence to support the ide that there was something wrong with me and that I wasn’t good enough.

Ultimately, realizing this was a big part of the solution. I realized that no plan or technique would really hold unless I was able to drop this old negative self-image I was attached to.

A breakthrough

Having spent years in a negative cycle of late-night deadlines, missed opportunities and broken promises, I turned to self-help for some answers.

This was a largely frustrating experience. Most of the content I found was based on the self-discipline model. The thing was, I already knew self-discipline was important. Being reminded of this wasn’t helpful in my situation.

A breakthrough came when I found a video which emphasized that I don’t HAVE TO do anything. This philosophy talked about emphasizing personal choice and autonomy. Something shifted in me with this philosophy.

Later, I came across Neil Fiore’s book “The Now Habit” which really started to turn things around.

Ultimately, I did a lot of my own research. Through trial and error, I found a way to approach this issue. To my great surprise, it had little to do with self-discipline. Rather, concept such as boundary setting, self-respect, self-trust, and guilt-free play were the concepts that changed everything.

I talk about it in more depth in this video…