Introduction

You’ve been there.

That feeling of guilt creeps in as the hours slip away. All your to-do lists are untouched, the goals unmet.

Sweet procrastination — the silent dream-killer that sneaks into your life and robs you of your precious time and potential. You’ve tried everything from time management techniques and productivity apps to manifestations and motivational quotes spread around the room.

I was there too.

I had calendars with colour-coded schedules, five alarms at key points of the day that made me “reset”, and a never-ending list of self-help books promising to cure my procrastination once and for all.

And yet, nothing realistically helped. I just kept lying to myself that this next technique would help… but it never did.

That is until I experienced a moment of clarity that changed the way I viewed my objectives and my life.

This became my mantra — the guiding light in the darkest moment of procrastination.

In this article, I want to share the journey that transformed my life and helped me deal with procrastination once and for all.

The Procrastination Abyss

Procrastination is a complex topic. It’s our #1 enemy. It makes us feel powerless and empty.

We just have to get up off the couch and do the dishes. We need 5 to 10 minutes. But for some reason, we don’t.

You see, finding the motivation to start the task or managing your time effectively are not the sole challenges in this fight. It’s a difficult emotional battle fueled by our intrinsic fear of failure and discomfort.

The more I tried to deal with it through external solutions, the more it kept me paralysed.

I realised that this approach was wrong. The real solution lay in myself.

Taking Responsibility for Procrastination

It all started with acknowledging that I was the root cause of my procrastination. No one else. No book, no app, and no technique could fix my issues until I took responsibility for my actions and decisions.

So then I made a promise to myself — a commitment. “Dear me, I will make you proud”. Every time I felt the urge to postpone an important task, I could hear these words echoing in my mind. This was the personal vow I’ve made to my future self.

How I Did It

Well… It wasn’t as simple as making a promise to my future self. Otherwise, I would’ve done it way earlier. It’s actually a system that has self-accountability at its core.

We often make decisions based on maximizing short-term dopamine rushes. But it’s no surprise that short-term profits rarely translate into long-term gains.

But then how can we finally reap these long-term benefits?

Setting Realistic Goals

The very first step in my self-accountability journey was setting realistic goals. It didn’t take me much to realise why I kept postponing doing the thing.

The thing was…more things. More ambiguous things. And more ambiguous things are, well… overwhelming.

So I broke each thing into smaller, manageable tasks that I could start at any given time without feeling paralysed.

For example, instead of aiming to develop a fully working application in one go, I set a goal to finish at least the core part of a smaller feature every day. This way, I could feel a sense of accomplishment each day as I knew my future self was closer and closer to having the application ready.

This fuelled my motivation to continue.

Embracing Imperfection

I also had to adopt a “good enough” mentality. You see, oftentimes we are paralysed by that fear of making mistakes. The fear of doing an imperfect job makes us do no job at all.

So rather than aiming for perfection, I started aiming for progress instead. It was such an important moment in my life when I acknowledged that mistakes are fine.

And so, “Dear me, I will make you proud” didn’t mean that everything would be perfect along the way. Instead, all the mistakes I’ve made would become lessons learned for my future self.

Consistency and Routine

The start of the pandemic hard struck me.

I was forced to move to a city where I knew nobody, other than my parents who I was living with. So you can already picture me, inside my small, dark room, doing the same thing every day…

It was the most transformative time of my life.

I could easily fall deep into depression. And I’m not saying I wasn’t close to it. But I chose to make the most of my time with myself.

I started doing a lot of things that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I continued my normal life. I started playing the piano, learned chess, and improved many aspects of my career and my self-development.

And all that, because I learned to embrace boredom and routine. I knew exactly what each day looked like and this helped me move forward. I’m not saying extreme routine is a good thing all the time. But it can be beneficial to have some sort of routine so that you can push through all this noise that a busy life generates.

Knowing what, when and how to do something is 90% of the battle. The missing 10% is doing it.

It’s funny to think about it, but I can proudly say that the present me is proud of the past me that he worked so hard during that period and he didn’t let me down.

Conclusion

In my journey of conquering procrastination once and for all, I discovered that the power to change was in me all along.

“Dear me, I will make you proud” became more than my mantra; it became the inner force that drives me every day in pursuing my dreams. Looking back, I can proudly say that I’ve become the person that my past self would be proud of.

If you find yourself trapped in the procrastination abyss, remember that the path to change begins with a commitment to yourself. You have the power to rewrite your story and make your future self proud. It’s a journey worth taking, and I believe in you.