A short instructional YouTube video by Brian Tracy presenting practical strategies to overcome chronic procrastination. Tracy emphasizes changing one’s thinking, prioritizing impactful tasks ("eat the ugliest frog first"), managing life rather than time, daily planning with prioritized task lists, and taking immediate action toward goals.
If you do the right things in the right way, you will get whatever results you desire. Hello, I'm Brian Tracy and one of the topics that I can never seem to provide enough information about is overcoming procrastination. Procrastination continues to be one of the largest enemies of our productivity. And if we don't find effective ways to break this habit, it has the potential to completely derail our path toward success in life. Every single person wants to earn more money. They want to be more successful. They want to have a nicer home, nicer car, more money in the bank and no financial worries. And the key to achieving these goals is, is to learn how to get more and better results. I know that you might be thinking, Brian, I've tried everything. I've set goals, I've created a time management schedule, but nothing seems to work for me. This brings me to our first strategy for overcoming chronic procrastination. And it's simply change your thinking. I've said this before, over and over to millions of people around the world, because the truth is, if you change your thinking, you'll change your life. Here's a trick for pulling yourself away from the temptation to procrastinate. Just say the words, do it now. Do it now. Do it now. These magic words will motivate you and push you to get started. When you repeat these words often enough, the message will get pushed deep into your subconscious and act as a trigger for getting things done right away. If you spend all of your time thinking about how your habit of chronic procrastination gets in the way of all of your goals, motivation and dreams, then your subconscious mind will accept that as the truth. And that's how your life will continue to be. If instead you spend your time thinking about how wonderful you are at getting difficult and important tasks done right away and how incredibly organized you are with your time, then your subconscious mind will start to accept that as the truth and you will start doing more of those things that overcome procrastination and get more things done faster. So that's the first critical step in not only changing your habit of procrastination, but also any habit in general. Change your thinking. The next strategy is from my best selling book on time management. Eat that frog. And it is this. If you have to eat more than one live frog, that's what I like to call a daunting project or task, a live frog. Then you should eat the ugliest frog first and you should do it right away without any delay. It doesn't do you any good to stare at the ugly live frog in front of you. This big task, if you simply resolve to take action and get it over with, your entire life will be uninhibited by the daunting tasks that once prevented you from moving forward. It's important to remember that you cannot manage time. Time exists completely out of our control, so you can't manage time. What you can do is to manage your life. Time management really is just life management. It is the management of the sequence of events in your life. It's the ability to choose what you do first, what you do second, and what you do later, if at all. And in this ability to choose lies your entire life. When you choose the most important thing and you choose to do that first, and you choose to do that rather than anything else, you immediately put your life onto the fast track. In fact, you can actually double your productivity, performance and output in one day simply by changing your order of choices in the way that you use your time. Now let's talk about the best way to use our time in order to move us closer to our goals. The way to do this is by developing a single minded focus on the things you need to do that will have the most important and beneficial impact on your life right now. Whenever you're faced with a task, you must first ask yourself what are the consequences of doing or not doing this? And if the consequences of not doing something are irrelevant, then don't do it and do the things that have serious, immediate consequences. So here's what you should do each morning to set yourself up for success and to determine which tasks you need to get started on right away to make a sizable difference in your life. Plan each day in advance. Take time each morning to address your major goals and then write out a list of things you need to do that day in order to get closer to those goals. Set priorities on each item so you don't skip your most important tasks and then get to it. When you jump right into the workday and start on something really important right away, the level at which you work for the rest of the day will be increased. Before we wrap up, I'd like to leave you with a thought to share with your friends and followers. It is this. If you do the right things in the right way, you will get whatever results you desire. Now I'd love to hear from you. So my question today is this. What is one critical task that you have been putting off and what will you do today to start working on that task? Leave a comment below and I'll be sure to follow up with you. Thanks for watching. And remember, if you want to change your future, take action. And take action now. If you enjoyed this video and feel it was valuable in teaching you how to overcome chronic procrastination, subscribe to my channel and share this video with your friends or anyone else who might benefit from this information. One last thing if you'd like to learn the exact strategies that I've used for years to overcome procrastination and set priorities on your life, click the link on the screen below or in the description of this video.
