Hey there,
Welcome back for Day 03 of The How to Stop Procrastinating Mini-Course.
Over the last 24 hours, you "should" have taken at least one tiny step forward—either by doing your MVA (minimum viable action) or committing to focus on a task for just 15 minutes.
I put "should" in quotes because there is no wrong way to do this mini-course.
The truth is, whether you tried one of these tools or not, there's a lesson for you today.
TODAY'S MINI-LESSON: Choose Your Own Adventure
→ If you used the minimum viable action or 15-minutes tool…
Congratulations. You just started building evidence that you can beat procrastination with the right structure and accountability—two very important behaviorist tools.
Behaviorism is the psychological theory that behavior = stimulus + response.
So if you want to change the response, you change the stimulus.
Stimuli include things like your environment, or reinforcing your behavior with a system of external rewards and punishments. Which means, for you, getting structured action steps, tools to test, and even someone holding you accountable (like me, checking up in your inbox today) seems to be an effective way to beat procrastination.
→ If you didn't take action or use either tool (no stress), here's your lesson…
Treat yourself with compassion anyway.
Researchers find that people who have a lot of self-compassion and are able to practice self-forgiveness generally experience less shame and are less likely to procrastinate.
Most people think they need to be hard on themselves to get shit done. But the opposite is true. What you want to do is treat yourself like you would a friend.
Maybe you'd normally quit the mini-course at this point because skipping yesterday's action step makes you feel like a failure, or like it's not worth continuing because you didn't do it perfectly, but guess what? You're still doing it right. You opened this email and showed up.
That's a small win and it counts.
TODAY'S ACTION PROMPTS
→ If you used the minimum viable action or 15-minutes tool, ask yourself…
- What did you learn?
- How does that change how you view yourself as a "procrastinator?"
- How might the structure and support of an online community for personal growth, like The Solved Membership, help you procrastinate less?
→ If you didn't take action or use either tool, ask yourself…
- What did you learn?
- How can you take on a growth mindset and treat yourself with the kindness you'd give to a friend?
- How might a kind and compassionate environment like the one in my online membership The Solved Membership help you procrastinate less?
WANT TO TAKE THIS LESSON DEEPER?
Drew and I go into way more detail about behaviorism, shame, and self-compassion in the How to Stop Procrastinating episode of Solved and the Solved Guide for the episode.
Tomorrow I'll share another tool to help you beat the procrastination beast.
See you then,
Mark
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