I am a king of procrastination. It is something that I struggle with anytime I have work to do. In this day and age it is getting harder and harder to not procrastinate.

Companies like Google(YouTube), and Facebook spend thousands of dollars each year to make algorithms that keep you watching for longer and longer. The whole basis of their companies rely on you continuing to use their platform. Now, I don’t mean to sound like I think this makes them evil. It is also about providing the user with the best experience, they want you to enjoy watching videos and reading posts so you stay longer.

This evolution of entertainment makes it hard for us to focus on the tasks that need to be done. I can’t tell you how many times I have sat at my computer and said to myself, “I will watch one YouTube video, then get to work”, only to spend the next 2 hours on YouTube. It is so easy to get lost in the videos you watch.

The problem is that when we do finally snap out of it, it might be lunch time already, and you have wasted the whole morning. So, you rationalize that it makes sense to take this as a rest day and get back to work tomorrow. If you are like me, the problem is you do this for multiple days in a row. The key is to use as much of the day as you can, if you wasted the morning on videos, you still have the whole afternoon and evening.

Today I wasted the morning like I described above, but I didn’t let that stop me. I went and got some stuff done in town, then I came home and exercised. I am now writing this post, and was able to beat the procrastination urge.

I have mentioned in a number of my past posts that self improvement is a process, this is no different. It takes time to figure out your own system to beat procrastination. If you work hard enough though, someday you wont have to work hard at beating procrastination, you will just instinctively get to work.

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