This content was created by Haritosh Srivastav. This content was uploaded by Haritosh Srivastav. This is a YouTube collab video titled "how to stop procrastination in 2021 [collab video]" (posted 2020-12-18). The excerpt is a multi-speaker discussion (four speakers labeled A–D) about the difference between procrastination and laziness, with personal anecdotes (missed business opportunity during COVID, delays writing a book), definitions, and practical advice: make daily to-do lists in small time slots, set small achievable targets, create a sense of urgency, automate recurring tasks (autopay), delegate work, act quickly, and prioritize execution over ideas.
Chapters
There is a vast difference between laziness and procrastination.
I made a New Year resolution which worked for me, and other years it did not work.
Ideas are not worth a dime, execution is.
So you don't have to do all the things all the time.
What procrastination means? When we delay something and we keep on delaying something purposely, that means when we are not motivated enough to do something and that's when we keep on postponing.
Well, laziness. You need to do something but still you don't have enough motivation to do it.
Procrastination is process of unnecessarily delaying or postponing things which can result into important things being missed out.
There is a vast difference between laziness and procrastination. Laziness means— you can say that laziness is a state where you don't want to do anything. You are just lying down, you are just resting, you don't want to do anything at all. That is laziness. Procrastination is an active state. Procrastination means what? You are involved in the activities that you enjoy. Rather than the activities that are actually important for you, right? So procrastination is something that we all should learn how to avoid it.
I'm going to talk about how I lost something just because of the procrastination. So I run an organization as well, that is travel organization, and I always wanted to focus on domestic India to promote. And just, I, I thought let's try and promote it in a very vast manner. And I kept on procrastinating. I thought, okay, let's start from December, let's start from January. I'll be visiting to Himachal Pradesh and many other states for the contracting purpose. And I kept on doing it. And then I thought, okay, let's do it from the next financial year, that is April. But then came COVID. And just because of COVID lockdown was imposed. And now I had a very good opportunity that I lost. At this point, the only place where people can travel is domestic, and I do not have the best of the contracting I could have otherwise done. So that's when I understood how dangerous can it be.
Because, you know, I wanted to write a book, and every time I wanted to write the first page, something within me would say, okay, Taibat, it's fine if you don't write today, you can write it tomorrow. Okay, it's fine if you don't write tomorrow, you can— you have this whole whole month. And that way, months passed and so many years passed, and I could never write my first draft.
The very first thing to avoid procrastination is to realize that you are procrastinating. Unless and until you realize that, you are not going to avoid it anyway. Let me give you a small trick, very important, to make to-do lists per day, per day, and in small, small time slots. So this is one thing that really helped me, and I believe that it can help you too.
Or, uh, the very first thing is, which I believe, that we should always take a practical target for ourselves to achieve. We should not take too many things on our plates, that the list becomes too long, that instead of, uh, you go for implementation, it starts haunting you. You get demotivated every time you look at it. You feel, oh my God, it's too much of a task to perform. And that's when you start procrastinating.
So I adapted a do-or-die attitude towards the thing. If I don't do it now, I'll never do it. That was my idea. So the first thing about dealing with procrastination is creating a sense of urgency. Why aren't people able to take immediate action? Because they don't feel it's urgent or important enough to be done right now.
I believe we can use two quick things to beat procrastination. Number one, automate things. For example, you have to pay a bill— electricity bill, mobile bill, credit card bill— use the autopay method so that you don't really have to do. You can automate a number of things that is required, so that will help you get down on your, on your list. You don't have to spend too much time on that. Number 2, delegate. Now we all have meetings, events, and shopping and other things where we don't really have to go. At that time, you can delegate that to others. You can delegate to your team members, you can delegate to your spouse and family members, so you don't have to do all the things all the time.
I have got some success just because I didn't procrastinate and just because I acted upon instantly. Last year, the three of my friends, suddenly one fine day, we were deciding, ki YouTube, so why not share knowledge with other people also, fine? So it was just a fair discussion, general discussion at tea time. And what happened with me is, as soon as I went I went home, I started making tutorials on the ongoing subject. I'm good enough. And very next day, I uploaded my first video on YouTube. Result, just because I didn't procrastinate, I didn't keep on thinking, I acted instantly. Or uska result chaiye hai ki aaj ek saal baad YouTube channel mein 1 million views hai, 10,000 eyeballs hai.
For October 20— I mean, for January 2019, the year 2019, I made a New Year's resolution which worked for me. And other years, it did not work for me because I was the same mistake, but almost everybody does. I was taking too long a list for myself to follow, and I was a most successful failure to do that. So 2019, I thought, let's take a small target. Let's see how does it go. So I took a small one, an achievable one. And you know what? I completed my target much ahead of time because it was a short one. And that kept me going month by month, month by month. And I kept on achieving all the plans that I had. And that boosted me to even try for 2020. And that's how I became far more productive than I thought I could ever be.
So the idea is, just because I was not procrastinating, in 2020 itself, I was able to read approximately a dozen books, able to conduct 20+ inspirational interviews, upload 100+ videos on YouTube, getting 10,000+ views, and also almost ready with my own book. This all happened because I was able to beat procrastination.
To do a task, in order to execute something, you need to bear that short-term pain. Like for getting up in the morning, I had to endure the short-term pain of coming off my warm cozy bed in the morning at 5 AM. But what was the pleasure that I was getting by waking up at 5 AM? I was writing my book. Luckily, by getting up every single day, I completed my first draft of the book.
So stop procrastinating and start acting.
To beat procrastination, automate and delegate.
Ideas are not worth a dime, execution is. So you might have a million-dollar idea, you might have a billion-dollar idea, but until you don't act on it, until you don't take action, it's just useless.
Always bite what you can chew, and when you chew, make sure you chew it well.
to say two things, guys. First, if you want to take massive—
