Have you ever found yourself procrastinating something that is really important?

I know I have. If you’ve ever found yourself putting off something that you know you need to get done, I want to show you my #1 trick for getting yourself unstuck and back into momentum.

You’ll stop procrastinating and start taking charge of your life again.

Let’s talk about the big “P” word, Procrastination. I think we sometimes procrastinate for a simpler reason than what other experts suggest.

I’ve heard others say that we procrastinate something because we just don’t want to do something. Or there all this “negative energy around the task” or “there’s not enough motivation for the task.” That might be part of it.

But I found that we procrastinate not just because we have negative energy around it.

One of the simplest way to break procrastination is this: understanding that you’re procrastinating because you are unclear on an action or verb-oriented task. It’s not because you necessarily have all these bad energetic feelings around it; it’s actually because you are unclear. There is ambiguity around the task.
To stop procrastinating and to start taking action, you need to harness the part of your brain that focuses on very specific criteria.

There’s a part of the brain called the Reticular Activation System (RAS). It’s the part of your brain that looks for specific criteria and get you to take action. The reason you find yourself procrastinating a task is usually because you haven’t broken it down to its most specific next actions.

If you’ve written down a task as general and unclear as “get Project X done,” your RAS will be hazy. It has to be specific. Write down a very specific first action (e.g., call Michael about the spreadsheet) and you’ll increase your probability of taking action 10x.

So here’s the formula to breaking procrastination: look at the task, break it down to its simplest action-oriented steps and then take action. Remember that it’s not about the energetic stuff in the atmosphere, it’s about being specific and getting clarity on your task so you can take action.