How to Beat Procrastination

The blank screen the empty page the unfilmed video whenever we sit down to start writing or creating anything. We're often Paralyzed by a force stopping us from starting stopping us from typing that first word writing that first page or filming that first video. Now the most common question I get asked on the Internet is utterly. How are you? So cool, but the second most common question is I lay how do you beat procrastination and the answer is in this book The War of art by Steven pressfield. He says that most of us have two lives the life. We live and the unlived life within us and between the two is this thing called.

Old the resistance and that is the secret to overcoming procrastination and this is actually a surprisingly life-changing insight and I first read this in 2017 and it actually completely changed the way that I approach life and meaningful productivity and it kind of helped me stop being a chronic procrastinator. And so in this video we're going to talk about three key points from the book that have helped me personally be procrastination and hopefully they can help do the same for you point. Number one know thy enemy. So the first question we need to address is what is resistance resistance is the negative Force that's actively working against us to stop us from.

Doing the things we want to do. It doesn't stop us from watching Netflix or from playing video games instead. It stops us from doing anything that we know in our hearts is going to level up our lives like resistance isn't really that feeling that we get when we call me bother to clean the desk or call me about the to I don't know wash the dishes that is resistance with a small R. But resistance with a Big R is the resistance that you know that Force that's holding us back from doing creative or entrepreneurial things or things that require any level of risk taking or putting ourselves out there and whenever we try and do any of this stuff we always have.

To go up against this hill of procrastination. That's a constant battle and there's a nice quote from the book where he says we don't tell ourselves. I'm never going to write my Symphony instead. We say I am going to write my Symphony. I'm just going to start tomorrow. I've heard this a million times with people being like, you know, what I want to start a YouTube channel at some point. I'm going to start a podcast but you know, the timings not quite right? I you know, I haven't quite got the gear I haven't quite got the Kudos. Why would anyone care what I have to say? This is all resistant. It's all that procrastination that's building within us. But what really fuels resistance is fear resistance is activated by fear and gain strength..

Whenever we give into that fear creating a cycle that we fall into and which leads to resistance becoming even stronger as our fear becomes even greater. But as he says in the book fear is actually a very good thing because when we feel scared about doing something it usually means we should just do the thing. He writes remember one rule of thumb the more scared. We are of a work or calling the more sure we can be that we have to do it and in a way resistance is that compass that points towards a thing in a life that's actually most important for us to do like I never feel any resistance toward sitting down and playing World of Warcraft..

But I do feel resistance towards sitting down and writing my book and that tells me that sitting down to write. My book is currently the most important thing. I need to be working on and the key rule of thumb here as Steven pressfield rights is of the more resistance you experience the more important your unmanifested art or project or Enterprise is to you. And since I first read this in 2017, I've actually started using this as a model for in a way model for decision-making. Like if I feel scared about doing something then more often than not I will try my very best to actually do the thing and so far in my life. I have never regretted doing.

Thing that I'm scared of but I've always regretted not doing something that I was scared of. So now that we've done step one, which is know our enemy and we've defined resistance and figured out what it actually is. It's that source that makes us procrastinate. We need to figure out some ways of dealing with it. And the first one is key Point number two in this video, which has become a professional in the book pressfield introduces the idea of the professional versus the amateur an amateur takes action whenever inspiration strikes or when they're in the right mood. They're not committed and the goals are focused on fun money and Status a professional chef..

It's their life said that the work is a priority. They're determined and committed to succeed by following their inner drive and creative Spirit. Now our boy Steve says that the only way we can deal with resistance is if we become a professional with our work rather than an amateur and I think I think it's interesting how he doesn't Define professional as being someone who makes money from the thing because you can want to make money from a thing but still treat it like a complete amateur but instead a professional is someone who does it for the sake of doing the work and takes pride in the work itself and there's a few other traits that professionals have when it comes to doing their job..

If you're a professional then you will show up every day to your job. No matter what you want just not go to work because you don't feel like it if you're a professional you work through adversity and you're open to criticism because you always want to improve whereas if you're an amateur, then you feel like you know, if you draw something or make a video and someone gives you bad feedback or you got a bad comment you get like really kind of woe is me and like it hurts your feelings and it like ruins your life because you're treating it like an amateur. Whereas if you treat it as a professional you would be more inclined to actually grow from the feedback and professional as well will understand that fear is just.

part of the work like if you're a doctor and that's your profession, you know that you're going to be stepping outside your comfort zone. Whereas if you approach things with an amateur perspective like starting YouTube channel or whatever as soon as the going gets tough, then you're going to fold like a cheap suit as they say and finally if you're a professional with your work you recognize that facing the resistance is the daily battle when I'm working as a doctor when I wake up in the mornings and I think I don't really feel like going to work. I do it. Anyway. It's part of the daily battle. It's just what you have to do when you're a doctor and you know, someone asks you to put an IV or a cannula into a patient who you know has difficult veins..

That's resistance you like I don't wanna do this but it's part of the work. It's part of the job. This is what I have to do. And we want to be kind of taking that sort of attitude towards our other like creative and entrepreneurial stuff. And obviously there is some level in which you can take this too far like being so focused on like treating your hobbies as a professional to the point where you doing it for eight hours a day is probably a little bit excessive and there is certainly something to be said for not monetizing all of your hobbies or at least not trying to make a living from your hobbies because like for me a hobby is fun when it makes a bit of money like playing..

Guitar if I could get paid a bit of money to play the guitar that would make it really really fun. But if I was reliant on playing the guitar for earning a living I'd be starving on the street and it would also make playing the guitar a lot less fun. So treating our creative and entrepreneurial stuff as a professional doesn't mean it takes over our life. It just means that we're approaching it with a bit more of a professional mindset rather than the mindset of oh, I'll do my thing whenever I feel like it because that doesn't really work if you're treating something like a pro key Point number three is we need to banish the ego now. He said that once we become a professional the.

We need to do is recognize the ongoing battle between the self and the ego and the way I see this is that our ego is more focused on external events and how other people see us whereas the self is this inner calm that we have which is about the way that we see ourselves when we led by our ego our main priorities to maintain the status of the eye in the world and we're just focused on how external events affect us and everything is very superficial and surface level. Then we've got the self which is made up of the individual and Collective unconscious areas of our minds which includes our dreams intuition..

Visions and aspirations. It encompasses the deepest form of who we are and when we sit down to create we're attempting to channel the self because it's through the self that we can be resistance. Now some of this stuff is a little bit woo for my liking like pressfield goes on about like how creative Endeavors are like a new plane of existence are all striving for that, you know plane of existence and resistance is like the devil that gets in the way. It can go a bit worried at times. It's kind of similar to like the growth mindset and fixed mindset stuff in a way when we have a fixed mindset and we get like negative feedback or something or we do..

We know is not very good. It really shakes us to the core because it like damages our ego. Whereas when we have a growth mindset to something. We recognize that if we fail at something it's just part of the process of improving over time. And another way that I think of this is when it comes to goal setting so I found that for me I get a lot more resistance is procrastination when I've got goals that are based on outcomes that are outside of my control. So for example, if I'm making YouTube videos, which is an easy example one way of thinking about my goals for YouTube is to think about okay..

I want this video to get this many views or I want to hit this many subscribers by the end of the year. That's a very outcome goal and it's very outside of my control. The only thing in my control is making the videos. But if I have a goal that I want this video to be really good then that's when the perfectionism takes hold. That's when I feel the resistance that's when I procrastinate so much to the point that I don't even make the video and I've seen this basically with every student who's been through my part-time YouTuber Academy anyone who's doing YouTube or starting YouTube or getting better at YouTuber taking it? Seriously, if you start thinking that this video needs to be good as defined by.

The people think of it it makes it really hard to actually make the video. Whereas what I prefer is to have most of my goals being input goals IE. They are entirely within my control. They're entirely based on inputs that I control. So I'm going to make two videos a week for the net for the rest of my life is an input goal at something is a broadly within my control. I'm going to write the best book that I can or end a book that I'm happy with is an input goal. It's a goal within my control. Whereas I'm going to write a book and I wanted to hit the New York Times bestseller list, which is what I've been thinking about recently. That's very much an output goal and is broadly outside of my control..

Troll And I find that when it comes to again took to writing my book any time I even think of that outcome goal. I feel the procrastination. I feel the resistance. I feel the pain. Whereas when I think you know, what my job is to do is to just write the best book that I can it becomes a lot easier to do and now I've realized that for basically whatever I do if I'm struggling with procrastination. Usually it's the resistance getting in the way and usually it's because I have some kind of outcome goal associated with the thing which for me personally is bad. It works for some people but I don't personally like them that we've talked about three ways of beating procrastination..

Nation number one name the enemy I either resistance number to become a professional and number three banish the ego. There's a lot more really good stuff about this in the book that we robot which as you can see is quite small. It doesn't take very long to read. And in fact, it only takes two hours to listen to or one hour. If you're going at Double speed like I do and you can do that on Audible who are very currently sponsoring this video. Now whenever inaudible sponsor my videos, I always need to pinch myself because basically Beyond any other broader work with it is the dream one because I have been evangelizing audible to all of my friends and anyone who listened to me for the last I don't know God knows how long even when I didn't have this YouTube channel and.

they weren't sponsoring my videos. And in fact, it's one of the nicest feelings in the world. When one of my friends sign up signs up for Audible and starts getting into audio books and tells me oh my God, I signed up to audible because of your recommendation. And now I'm reading the mistborn series and my mind is blown because it's just so good. So if you want to learn more about beating procrastination though, the definitely check out the war of art audio book, but if you're looking for fiction recommendations, which is what I personally prefer to listen to most of the time inaudible, I would 1000% recommend the mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. This series is narrated by a guy called Michael Kramer who is like the best narrator in the world in my opinion, and he's narrating..

Mistborn series on The Stormlight Archive and The Wheel of Time and these are like Amazing Fantasy Books that I've been listening to on Audible it since like 2017 and I basically had Michael Michael Kramer's voice in my head at all times. So if you're new to the world of audiobooks hundred percent, I would recommend the mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. The first book of that is the final Empire and I started listening to that in like yeah 2017 has completely changed my life because now Brandon Sanderson is my favorite author and I freaking love listening to fantasy books inaudible another really good one to try is Stardust by Neil Gaiman. You might've seen the film. It's pretty good film, but the book is even better and it's a.

A really nice love story and it's just like narrated very well by Neil Gaiman himself to get started with a totally free 30-day trial in which you can get one free audiobook to listen to please head over to audible.com forward slash Ali Abdul and then you can sign up for your 30-day trial get your free audiobook. I'd recommend the final Empire by Brandon Sanderson whole Stardust by Neil Gaiman. If you want to go fiction or the war of art, if you would like the topic in this video and you want to learn more about how to beat the resistance and honestly of the hundred plus apps that I subscribe to I always say even when they're not sponsoring my videos, I always say that audible is the single subscription that I would.

Onto above all else. I would even cancel my Netflix subscription and my water wall cross subscription. If I had to in order to just subscribe to audible as the only thing because the amount of value is added to my life in terms of how little I paid for it. Each month is just absolutely astronomical and probably the most cost like cost effective thing that I own in my life. So if that sounds up your street and you want to get into the world of audiobooks and join me on this journey of listening to audiobooks forever and head over to audible.com forward slash Ali Abdullah to get your 30 day free trial and a free audio book. Anyway, I want to end with a quote from the book..

Where he says never forget this very moment. We can change our lives there never was a moment and never will be when we are without the power to alter our destiny this second we can turn the tables on Resistance. Now this book had a pretty profound effect on my life and my creative and entrepreneurial journey and if you liked this video and you want to check out my thoughts on more books that have really impacted my life then check out this short playlist over here. The first video in it is about three books that changed my life and then we've got a few other very short videos summarizing some of the other books that I loved and have really helped me in life. So thank you so much for watching to hit that subscribe..

White button if you aren't already and I will see you next time. Good night..