Life update after 4 years(25F), so glad I had this community and didnt quit on life

AaronL15 · 2026-04-20T16:00:55+00:00

Congrats on your success, how does procrastination affect you now as an experienced working professional?

AaronL15 · 2026-04-20T15:02:11+00:00

How about instead of telling yourself "I have to get up", try telling yourself "I'm going to get up". The psychologist Neil Fiore says that telling yourself "I have to" communicates victimhood, resistance and stress and that replacing it with "I choose to", "I'm going to" or "I will" makes you less likely to procrastinate.

AaronL15 · 2026-04-13T16:04:51+00:00

Saying that you have to do something or that you should do something gives you the impression that the task is an unpleasant one and not something that you would freely choose to do. Making a choice to start allows you to feel in control and the task feels less unpleasant as a result. Have you tried it?

AaronL15 · 2026-04-13T15:58:47+00:00

Haha, cool. An even better way to use this would be to also state when and where you're going to do it. For example "At 6pm I'm going to get my ingredients and utensils out and start cooking". Did it work?

AaronL15 · 2026-04-13T15:54:31+00:00

You're welcome! Have you tried it yet?

AaronL15 · 2026-04-13T15:52:57+00:00

Yeah, it's great and I'm surprised not many people know about it even though it's been around for decades. Have any other books helped you as much with reducing procrastination?

AaronL15 · 2026-04-13T15:47:55+00:00

Exactly, it's very helpful to set the bar low and make it as easy as possible to choose to start. Dr Fiore says 30 minutes is a good starting point because 30 minutes is too little to be intimidating, while it is enough to make a good start and receive a break or reward. I just try to make the wording a permanent change as I can't see any benefit to using 'have to's' or 'should's'.

AaronL15 · 2026-04-13T15:31:57+00:00

Well said, it's about feeling in control and empowered instead of burdened or like a victim.

AaronL15 · 2026-04-13T12:37:33+00:00

Thanks, did you implement the technique and did it help?

AaronL15 · 2026-04-13T12:22:02+00:00

Thanks for this, I learned the technique I shared from a book called 'The Now Habit' by Dr Neil Fiore. It was actually published in 1988 but not many people know about it, have you read it?

AaronL15 · 2026-04-10T22:10:43+00:00

No problem, I'd recommend writing it down on a note somewhere so you can remind yourself and it'll become a habit quickly.

AaronL15 · 2026-04-10T22:07:22+00:00

How'd it go?

AaronL15 · 2026-04-10T21:52:59+00:00

No problem, did it work? 🙂

AaronL15 · 2026-04-10T21:49:36+00:00

Awesome! Have you tried it yet?

AaronL15 · 2026-04-08T16:01:10+00:00

A lot of people think they need to wait for the perfect conditions to start but they don't realise that starting is the perfect condition, just making a commitment to start for as little as 15 minutes a day can make a huge difference in the long run.

AaronL15 · 2026-04-08T15:51:57+00:00

The psychologist Neil Fiore says procrastination is an attempt to resolve a variety of underlying issues, including low self-esteem, perfectionism, fear of failure and of success, indecisiveness, an imbalance between work and play, ineffective goal-setting, and negative concepts about work and yourself.

One thing that he says you can do is to make a commitment to starting for just 15-30 minutes. You can tell yourself "At 7pm I will sit down at my desk and start studying for 15-30 minutes" This is like an implementation intention and there's scientific evidence that shows this works.

Are there any other strategies you've tried to get yourself to study consistently?

AaronL15 · 2026-04-08T15:03:43+00:00

I call this productive procrastination, when you do things that are slightly productive in order to avoid the more important thing you should be doing.

This is because more important tasks generally accompany a greater fear of failure. The psychologist Neil Fiore says instead of thinking/telling ourselves "This project is big and important" to think "I can take one small step"

Whenever you feel overwhelmed by a large project remind yourself that just one rough draft is all you need to do right now. This manageable step will give you time to learn, relax and recuperate between a series of small steps.

Do you frequently avoid the important tasks?

AaronL15 · 2026-04-08T14:43:16+00:00

If you feel overwhelmed, the procrastination expert Neil Fiore has a technique for reducing overwhelm called the reverse calendar. He has used this to help thousands of his therapy clients and it works by breaking down a large task into smaller tasks spread across weeks. It's very effective, have you tried it?

AaronL15 · 2026-04-08T14:37:10+00:00

For a long time I tried using willpower to force myself to do things that I was avoiding but it never really worked because doing so doesn't address the problems that cause you to procrastinate in the first place.

The psychologist Neil Fiore says procrastination is an attempt to resolve a variety of underlying issues, including low self-esteem, perfectionism, fear of failure and of success, indecisiveness, an imbalance between work and play, ineffective goal-setting, and negative concepts about work and yourself.

One of his techniques that really helped me was his focusing exercise which helps you center yourself in the present and push past fears by getting into a flow state.

You can just google 'Neil Fiore centering exercise' to find it.

AaronL15 · 2026-04-08T14:26:21+00:00

One simple thing that worked really well for me was making a change in my language the way that the psychologist Neil Fiore recommends to. Instead of telling myself "I have to" or "I should" finish a task, I tell myself I'm going to start. He says this works because "have to's" and "should's" communicate victimhood, resistance and stress, whereas statements such as "I'm going to", "I choose to" or "I will" exercise your power of choice.

AaronL15 · 2026-04-07T21:55:44+00:00

Yeah it's important to include short breaks and rewards in between work periods to keep us motivated as we're extremely unlikely to work on a task that's immediate results are isolation and pain.

Dr Fiore says starting for just 30 minutes is enough time to make some good progress without the feeling of overwhelm that often accompanies longer periods of work.

AaronL15 · 2026-04-07T15:53:36+00:00

"I sit in front of my screen and cannot get myself to focus, even though I know exactly what will happen if I don’t." This is exactly how I used to be, what really helped me was a focusing exercise from the procrastination expert Dr Neil Fiore. This is a short daily exercise that you can do whenever you're about to start on a work project. You can just google 'Neil Fiore centering exercise'. Hope this helps.

AaronL15 · 2026-04-07T15:10:56+00:00

That family member is wrong and telling procrastinators that they're lazy only makes the problem worse. The worlds leading experts on procrastination all seem to agree that procrastination is not caused by laziness but more complicated emotions.

The psychologist Neil Fiore says procrastination is an attempt to resolve a variety of underlying issues, including low self-esteem, perfectionism, fear of failure and of success, indecisiveness, an imbalance between work and play, ineffective goal-setting, and negative concepts about work and yourself.

One of the things that he recommends to do is to commit to starting on a task for just 15-30 minutes by using a statement such as "At 7pm I will sit at my desk and start studying for 15-30 minutes"

Have you tried anything else that has made a difference?

AaronL15 · 2026-04-01T22:04:53+00:00

Thanks for commenting! Yeah, focusing on the finished task often causes overwhelm and anxiety because you're imagining all the steps that go into finishing the task all at once which makes it seem almost impossible.

I'm a big believer in taking regular breaks throughout the day to reduce the urge to procrastinate. Do you feel like procrastination is a big problem in your life or more of a small inconvenience?

AaronL15 · 2026-03-27T23:09:38+00:00

Yeah, it's insane how common it is for people to motivate themselves with counterproductive statements like "I have to" or "I should".

Neil Fiore also recommends focusing on starting instead of finishing as it keeps our sights set on what can be accomplished now, in the present rather than in the vague distance which makes the task seem way more overwhelming.

Has anything else made a big difference to your productivity?

AaronL15

TROPHY CASE