How to Beat Procrastination
We all love to procrastinate, mostly for our short-term dopamine drove happiness in exchange of achieving the long-term goal in hard ways. However, there’s a simple formula to overcome procrastination easily.
The book The Procrastination Equation posits this formula to determine your motivation, i.e. the energy or will to complete your tasks.
This quiz helps you determine which of these factors is causing your low motivation. If the problem is either low expectancy or low value, according to the equation, we need to make them higher to increase your motivation. On the other hand, if the reason behind your procrastination is either delay or impulsiveness, we need to work to get them to lower to increase motivation.
Increase Expectancy and Value
Expectancy is your confidence of success. If you believe you’ll successfully complete the task, you have high expectancy. If you’re not so sure, your expectancy is low.
Value is the enjoyment of doing the task brings you. Doing interesting tasks is usually high value, and tasks that are mind-numbingly boring are, you guessed it, low value.
Decrease Impulsiveness and Delay
Impulsiveness is your tendency to get distracted. If you’re able to focus on a task, congratulations. Your impulsiveness is low. On the other hand, if you find yourself constantly opening other tabs, checking notifications and texts, or chatting with coworkers, you have high impulsiveness.
Delay is how far off the perceived reward for completing the tasks is. If you get rewarded for it immediately on completing the task, the delay is short. However, if you can expect the reward for the task you’re doing only next year, the delay is long.
This excerpt is taken from a great web tool that can help you to find the reason for your procrastination by asking some short questions and a quiz. Take it from here.
Looking for more productivity tips? Check here.