How One Habit Supercharged My Productivity

For as long as I could remember, I was a procrastinator. I would start out every work or study session by listing off everything I had to do and then promptly disregard the list and distract myself with whatever I could. Some of the the time it was by talking to people around me, most of the time it was social media. During university, I would spend hours at the library only to find that I came out with very little actual studying accomplished. The to-do lists that I created for myself rarely ever got smaller and they would keep adding up until I got so stressed about it that I would do a half effort try at each tasks just to get it off the list. My life was essentially a continued combination of stress and wasted time. My work suffered and it showed.

A year ago my friend recommended that I take a course she was running called the Habit Course. Intrigued with the idea of “hacking my habits”, I signed up. Over the five week course, we learned about how habits are formed and the effects it has on our lives. We also learned that the mindset we carry into our lives make a huge difference in the outcomes that we create. For many reasons (which I will go into further in future posts) this course was life changing for me. One of the biggest realizations that I came out with was that my procrastination stemmed from an avoidance of doing something that I perceived was hard. For example, a lot of the time I avoided studying because I was lost as to where to start. That was usually enough of a hurdle for me to delay doing it until I absolutely had to. Hours were wasted and I didn’t gain anything from it.

One of the worst cases of my procrastination resided in my relationship with my e-mail inbox. Whenever I received an e-mail that required some sort of action from me, I would quickly decide the amount of effort that was required to respond to it. If it was easy, I would do it right away. However, if the response required work or was something I would rather not deal with, I would stash it away for later. The excuse I would use with myself was that I needed time to craft the perfect response. In reality, I was just avoiding something that needed to be done. The result was that I thought about it all day and then ended up writing a weak response or completely forgetting to respond. This was a horrible habit that I didn’t even realize I was doing until I actually forced myself to look at it.

How I Changed My Habit

I remember reading an interview with a successful businessman where one of his tips was to organize your to-do list by how you felt about each task and do the one that you felt the most negatively towards first. His reasoning was that your natural instinct would be to avoid it and put it down the priority list, when in reality it will be on your mind until you actual do it. Not only are you avoiding the task but your mind won’t be completely on whatever you are doing until you get it off the list. For some reason this idea stuck with me. When I decided to make a change in my life, this was the first thing I thought about. By identifying that my procrastination came from an act of avoidance, I realized that the only way to stop it was to face my challenges head on.

I started out with something simple. My work sessions started with my to-do list and I made the priorities based on how I viscerally felt about each task. I found that my gut feeling gave me a pretty good indication of what I really wanted to avoid. The first thing I completed was the thing I dreaded doing the most. The result: I almost immediately felt better about the whole work session.

The next thing I committed myself to was that I would deal with e-mails immediately when I got them. If it just required just a response, I would make a decision right away and send the response back. If it required some work on my end, I would message the person back to let them know I got the their e-mail and then put the task on my to-do list.  This created two important changes to my life. The first was that it allowed me to take my mind off of my e-mail inbox and focus on whatever I was doing. The second was that it stopped me from using the excuse of “I must’ve missed your e-mail” or “I forgot about your e-mail”. It made me accountable for the e-mails that were sent to me so that I could not procrastinate or not do them without it coming back to bite me. It also honestly made me a more trustworthy person. I have since expanded this philosophy to many of the tasks that arise in my life.

So what happened when I added these few small changes to my life? I started realizing that I had way more time to do things in a day than I initially thought. By getting the hardest things out of the way first or when they come, I was able to free my energy up the rest of the day to focus on the tasks I had at hand. Suddenly, my productivity went through the roof and I wasted much less of my time. Many of my complaints of “I don’t have enough time” seemingly went away and I was able to do more of the things that mattered to me. It felt amazing.

“Just Do It” as a Habit

Excited about my new discovery, I went and told the Habit Course team about it all. Turns out, it was a habit they already had seen someone take on in the course previously and they had coined it as “Just Do It”. I loved the sound of that phrase (as does Nike and Shia LaBeouf) so I took it on as my own. Today, “Just Do It” shows up in many different parts of my life. When I am at home and not wanting to go to the gym, I say to myself “just do it”. When I am getting out of school and don’t want to attend my extra curricular commitments, I say to myself “just do it”. Even when I started writing this blog and found myself wandering over to Facebook –  I stopped myself and said “just do it”. I know there are things that I have to do and the reality is that most of the time sitting on it won’t make it any easier. The idea of “Just Do It” forces me to cut many of the excuses out of the way and allows me to be present with the task at hand.

So does saying “just do it” make me a superhuman that can find time to do anything that I want? Most definitely not. I still have days when I feel so overwhelmed with the tasks on my to-do list that I don’t want to do anything. Sometimes I avoid certain tasks subconsciously and not realize I am doing it until much later. Some days saying “just do it” doesn’t work and I end up losing an argument with myself. Those times suck. However, I know that if I keep working at it, eventually the act of “Just Do It” will become much easier. Habits are hard work and they definitely don’t form overnight. Ensuring that I keep a positive mindset about the whole experience is a huge part of how much success I will have. Having already seen some the positive effects of what this habit can do for me, I am optimistic about what it could mean for my future.