Let Me Get This Straight About Procrastination
Before you even think about ending procrastination, I’ve got some news for you: you can’t end it immediately. It takes time. Every single one of us has something we procrastinate on. I don’t know what yours is, but I can tell you what I did that helped me gradually erase mine over time. And guess what? I still procrastinate to this day. I even procrastinated starting this blog—something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time.
So if you’re ready to change your life for the better, stick with me for the next few minutes.
The Hidden Truth About Procrastination
My Personal Story
3 years ago, I lost my father. It was painful for me to lose a person that taught me everything since I was born. Everything since he died changed, for the good and bad.
The good thing is I became a stronger person and started to filter my friends. I got my girlfriend who was with me all along the way, which I’m grateful for, and set goals for myself and for the future ahead.
The bad thing is, I really couldn’t improve myself through the years. It felt like I was going down instead of going up in the graph.
I started asking myself questions like:
- Am I not good enough to achieve my goals?
- Is everyone else just getting ahead of me because I can’t keep up?
- Is there something wrong with me?
More and more questions like these kept coming to my mind, and it felt even more horrible.
I didn’t know where to start, I didn’t even know where the root of the problem was.
Observing My Daily Actions
I decided to put everything aside and observe my thoughts and actions throughout the day—every single day for a week. I wrote them down in Notion. Two things stood out immediately:
- I wasn’t doing anything that made me better mentally or physically.
- I wasn’t taking real action toward my goals during the day.
After a very long time, I stumbled across something that changed everything for me, and made me start taking action.
It’s called habits.
But it’s not just habits. There’s something else that’s missing in the puzzle.
It was self-belief and self-respect.
“Is that really what’s stopping me from improving myself?”
That was the first thought that came to my mind when I thought about these 3.
How to Finally Face Procrastination: The Missing Piece In The Puzzle
Like I said in the beginning, I will tell you what was my root problem and how I am able to deal with it.
Step 1: Document Everything You’re Doing
The very first thing you need to look at is what you are currently doing. And I mean everything that you’re doing.
If you’re already aware of what you’re doing, simply get a pen and paper (or open Notion like I do) and write your daily habits that you’re doing.
Add a +, – or = to every habit that you’re doing.
- (+) Plus: The habit is good for you, and you want to keep it.
- (-) Minus: The habit is less effective or harmful, and you want to stop doing it.
- (=) Equal: It’s a neutral, human activity (e.g., eating, waking up, drinking water).
This system shows you what you want to include and exclude from your daily life. Remember, habits can be a double-edged sword: they can either drag you down or build you up over time.
Step 2: Focus on Good Habits
If you don’t understand it yet, habits are a two-way sword. It can stab you with bad habits that overtime will bring you down, or can make you a better human being.
So focus on building good habits. And most importantly, choose which habits you want to build in the first place.
Because overtime, they will shape you as the person you intend to become.
If you want to learn more about building habits, I highly recommend you to read Atomic Habits by James Clear.
But that doesn’t fully cover the fact that you might still not build habits. We need to go deeper.
The Power of Stacking Wins
What do you really need? you need to STACK WINS. Daily.
Why?
It builds:
- Self respect
- Confidence in your word to yourself
- Self belief in the long run.
Imagine you have a friend that’s always telling you that he/she will come to the gym with you, go out with you to drink coffee, walk with you, go to a restaurant, stop smoking, stop drinking alcohol, etc.
But for some reason, he/she never shows up or does anything he/she says.
Their word is useless.
Imagine you telling yourself you’ll wake up at 6 AM. And you don’t.
Imagine you telling yourself you’ll eat healthier. And you don’t.
Imagine you telling yourself you’ll go to the gym today. And you don’t.
How does it feel like to be around someone who acts like this, whose word means nothing?
You eventually will not respect that person.
That’s why you need to build self-respect with daily wins—even the smallest wins. Track them.
Now how do you get this along with self-belief and habits together?
Simple. You need at least 3 wins every single day. My daily small wins that I currently track are:
Daily Wins You Can Track
- Meditation – Mental Win
- Reading – Improving myself
- Journal – Clearing my mind
- Meditation – Even if you only meditate for 1 minute, 3 minutes, or 5 minutes a day, it’s a big win.
- Reading – A book is like a whole life’s experiences & knowledge of a person who decided to create this book. Choosing this over scrolling on your phone will make your life so much better.(I personally read Atomic Habits now, I’ll make a whole different blog post about this book with my takeaways).
- Journaling – This is a cheat code to clearing your brain. I want you to write at least 2 things you’re grateful for every day, and write all the actions you’ve taken so far today. (psst, talk about your daily wins)
You can count even the smallest wins, from cleaning your bed, to waking up, brushing your teeth, finishing work.
Adding the Final Puzzle Piece: Focus
As you stack more and more daily wins, start to add new things to the list. Go up from 3 to 4, 5, 6 slowly.
The purpose of doing this is to build self-respect and self-belief. And as you do these things, you build your habits that shape your reality.
Writing the actions you’ve taken throughout the day every day will slowly start building your belief in yourself that you can actually achieve your goals.
But one thing might still be missing.
You guessed it right, FOCUS.
“What if I’m not focused?”
It’s simple. Right now it’s easy for you to get distracted. But, what if you combine all the previous steps together?
What if you do start building your habits, your self belief, your self respect, your confidence in yourself and in your word to yourself?
The thing is, instead of making it easy to get distracted, make it hard to get distracted.
When you have your systems in place, your daily actions slowly begin to become automatic. For example, you pull out your phone to check notifications and end up scrolling endlessly. It’s happening automatically. It’s possible the other way—journaling, meditating, reading, writing.
Make the habits you don’t want in life less attractive, and the new and good ones more attractive, until the moment the activity becomes automatic.
That’s how you increase your guarantee that your reward is deserved with the habits you developed.
It’s not new to you that we live in a noisy world. We have lots of distractions approaching us every single day.
So building self respect for yourself, including the belief and habits, can change your life.
Conclusion: My Final Thoughts of Procrastination
If you asked me what procrastination is 3 years ago, I would guess it’s laziness or lack of discipline.
But today, my thoughts are this: procrastination comes from lack of clarity to take action on the things that matter. Procrastination is also a form of repeated, less effective habits that compound over time to this exact procrastination. But the root of this? It’s the respect that is missing for myself. If I don’t respect myself, if I keep giving myself false promises and punishing myself, why would I listen to myself in the first place? Why would I even believe in myself in the first place?
Take Action Now
You already know my key takeaways:
- Identify your habits and label them with +, –, or =.
- Stack small daily wins to build self-respect and self-belief.
- Strengthen your focus by making distractions harder and good habits easier.
Free Notion Template
I can help you even more. I’m giving you a free Notion template for this exact practice. It’s basically a journal and win tracker I use for myself, all in one place. You can track your data and stack your daily wins seamlessly.
If you don’t have Notion, just click this button. it’s free by the way.
If you are already signed up, get your free template here for free
Remember: Procrastination won’t vanish immediately, but with daily wins, solid habits, and genuine self-respect, you’ll weaken it over time—until it’s no longer running the show. One small win at a time, you can shape your reality into something far more fulfilling.
Ready to start stacking those wins? Let’s do this—together.