How to Stop Procrastinating: a simple Guide to Mastering Difficult Tasks and Breaking the Procrastination Habit

Exercise #2: Write Down All Your Current
Commitments
To recap, I suggest a simple, three-step exercise that will require about
30–60 minutes of your time:
1. In a notebook (or an app like Evernote), write down all your current
commitments and any activities you’d like to do within the next
year.
2. Focus on the immediate future by using these prompts:
Is there a medical issue that you’ve been putting off?
What work-related projects are coming up?
What personal projects are coming up?
Is there a vacation that you’d like plan with your family?
What habits would you like to build?
Are there incomplete household tasks that you keep putting
off?
What meetings and appointments are coming up?
What goals would you like to accomplish?
Are there any important events coming up for your family
members?
Is there an exercise program you’d like to start?
Are there any projects that you know you need to do but
you’ve been putting off?
Do you keep ignoring important—but not urgent—daily
tasks?
3. Keep this list handy as you work your way through the rest of the
exercises provided in this book.

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STEP #2: FOCUS ON FIVE CORE PROJECTS
Let me start this section with a short disclaimer: what you’re about to
read will be the most mentally challenging step in the entire book. The
recommended exercise isn’t hard to do. But staying committed to it will
require a level of dedication that most people don’t possess. That said, I
guarantee if you stay the course, this framework will become your secret
weapon to permanently eliminating your procrastination habit.
The typical advice you learn from most time-management books is
learning how to cram as many tasks into your schedule as possible. I feel
this advice is one of the reasons why many people procrastinate. Their
lives are filled with so many tasks and obligations that they simply don’t
time to do them all.
In our modern society, it seems like many folks wear their overworked,
overbooked, frenetic schedule like a badge of honor. It’s no longer about
what you produce, but how many hours you’ve worked each week. Just
look on social media and you’ll see lots of humblebrag updates that end
with #hustle.
On the other hand, if you study the most successful people in the world,
you’ll see that they don’t juggle dozens of projects. Instead, they identify
what they’re good at and double down on the handful activities related to
what author Gary Keller calls “The
ONE Thing
” in his book by the same
name.
My point? It’s easy to procrastinate if your daily to-do list is filled with
dozens of tasks and projects. You’ll feel so overwhelmed that you can’t
help but put off many activities. And often the tasks that you
procrastinate on are the ones that can have a massive, positive impact on
your life.
So how do you fix this?
It’s simple: narrow down your attention to just a handful of core projects.

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As we’ve discussed, people often procrastinate because they feel
overwhelmed by all their obligations. But if you limit your focus to only a
few options, then it’s easy to take consistent, productive action. The best
example of this strategy is called the 25–5 Rule.