5 Techniques How to Prevent Procrastination By Robin Sharma

Watch the video above from Robin Sharma, he shares his techniques on how one can prevent procrastination and increase productivity using 5 effective techniques.

The video is only about 16 minutes, but there are immense valuable insights contained in the video. Watch the video now.

Sharma is a famous success coach who has helped thousands of others to live their lives. And he is also the best-selling authors of a few books including “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari”, “The Greatness Guide”, and “The Leader Who Had No Title”. Of all his books, I love The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari the most.

If you’re having hard times fighting procrastination or finding it difficult to come up with motivation or energy to work on your goals or dreams, these 5 techniques can work for you.

Want to know if you’re a procrastinator and what type of prorcrastination personality you have? Take this quiz to find out.

1. Magnificent obsession statement & a dream collage

Create a statement of what you want and read it every night before you sleep and also read it once every morning right after you wake up.

Write your magnificent obsession statement on a card and carry it with you everywhere you go. You can read it any time whenever you are free, in your commute or while waiting for your client. The most important time to read it is once in the morning and once at night.

You want to wake up with your obsession so that you can focus your entire day and work on what you want with passion and drive. And read it again once before you sleep so that you can bring the idea into your dreams and let your subconscious mind manifests it for you.

This is just like how affirmation works. And the next thing you need to do is to create your dream collage, where most people known as a vision board.

Get yourself a journal or a notebook, and then find all the pictures related to your dreams and create your own dream collage. For example, if one of your dreams is to visit the Eiffel Tower, find out a picture of it from the magazine and cut it out, and then paste the picture into your journal.

According to Sharma, 95% of our activities is run by our subconscious mind. How you think, eat, bath, brush teeth, etc, 95% of them is controlled by your subconscious mind. And because our subconscious mind operates in pictures, you need to instruct it and give it a direction of where you want to go in life.

This is why you need to create a dream collage. Every morning and every night, look at your dream collage or your vision board and imagine you are living your dream life.

This first technique will help you prevent procrastination and shatter your chains and get things done. You will feel motivated to take action because you are driven by your dreams through your magnificent obsession statement and your dream collage.

2. The 30-day procrastination diet

Get yourself a calendar, and for the next 30 days, pick one thing that you have been resisting or procrastinating, and then do it.

You want to write it down and then take action right away. For example, it can be something like on day one, you can choose to make your bed, and you do it. On the second day, if you have been procrastinating on exercising, you can write down “to jog for 30 minutes”, and when the day comes, you do it.

The key is to train your willpower. Researchers have found that willpower is like your muscle, the more you use it and train it, and the more powerful it can be.

And throughout these 30 days procrastination diet, you choose to do one thing that you have been resisting or procrastinating, this way, you can train and build your willpower.

When you start to do things that you have been resisting, you rewire your brain for more personal power, and the more personal power you have, the easier it is for you to take action and beat procrastination.

3. The second wind workout

In this technique, Sharma suggests the “second wind workout”. This is where you workout and exercise twice a day. Most people choose to do it in the morning, which is what Sharma suggests, but he also suggests another workout session in the early evening say around 4, 5, or 6 pm.

We all know that exercise is good for our health, but what most of us did not realize is that exercise is also a great tool for beating procrastination and improving productivity. Exercise can improve our mental health too.

There is a study done at the University of Toronto, where two groups of people are involved. One group goes through exercise and the other did not. The study found that the group that goes through exercise actually has more focus, better learning power, and stronger memory than the other group.

The key is the second wind workout where you exercise for about 20 or 30 minutes in the second half of the day.

This will improve your metabolism rate, your body release endorphins to make you feel joyful, and you feel fresh after the exercise session.

You don’t have to go for an intense workout session, just a 20 or 30 minutes exercise will be sufficient.

4. Create distraction-free environment

When there are too many disorders and distractions, you will not be able to focus and get the big things done. Imagine when you want to work on your goals, and out of a sudden, your friends buzz you on Whatsapp or there is a notification on your Facebook, you will check it out as a natural response, and this will distract you and makes you procrastinate.

When Steve Jobs was fired from Apple and he went on to start NeXT, he instructed the workers to paint his office all white. When people asked him why he did so, he said that he did not want any distraction and he just wanted to fully focus on his most important mission. Steve Jobs biography is one of the most inspirational stories that everyone should read, including you.

Hence, create your distraction-free environment right now. Build a bunker to prevent yourself from distractions. Work alone as much as possible. Switch off your phone or turn to the flight mode to avoid distraction.

5. Release your self-sabotage

This is one of the most powerful anti-procrastination tools that shared by Sharma. He says that the number one reason people procrastinate is because of fear, which they have developed since an early age.

I bet you have heard these words before:

“It is impossible. You can’t do it.”
“You can’t be world-class.”
“You can’t have all the money you want.”

And these are voices of fear that stop people from doing great things. Sharma says it well, in order to do something, regardless of whether it is writing a book, getting fit, or achieving financial freedom, you need to step out from who you are right now and become a new you.

This is the reason people procrastinate because they are afraid of venturing into the unknown. If you want to be fit, you need to become a new person, which means you have to get away from your comfort zone.

And when you are aware of this, you can take control and gain personal power to do the things that you have been afraid to do. This is when things started to change and your life can be truly transformed.

Procrastination will never be an issue to you when you are aware that it is alright to do things that you are scared to do and to venture out of your comfort zone.

Conclusion

These 5 techniques to prevent procrastination are truly powerful. Now that you have learned them, don’t choose to procrastinate on them, instead, choose to act on them and apply them to your life.

For instance, create your own magnificent obsession statements and dream collage now. Go through the 30-day diet plan, create a bunker to avoid distractions, and practice the second wind workout.