One of the biggest complaints I hear from my friends is that they set goals and don’t achieve them. The word procrastination is on everyone’s lips. We’re kind of wearing it out.

I am lucky to be surrounded by smart, talented, driven, experienced, knowledgeable, capable people who want to change the world, yet they stumble upon what we call procrastination.

If I ask in a group of 100 people “Who here procrastinates?”, I bet you 97.5% will raise their hands, including myself.

And not only that we procrastinate, which we think it’s bad enough, but we get that sticky feeling, it makes us feel guilty, makes us lose our self-confidence, makes us even hate ourselves!

There even more to weight heavy on us:

• On the morning we are afraid that we will be procrastinating
• While we are procrastinating, we feel angry at ourselves
• And after we’ve procrastinated, we regret it

All these beautiful, uplifting feelings, and still the work didn’t get done and the goal didn’t get achieved. Procrastination leads 1000 points to 1.

You’re not procrastinating because you are lazy, undisciplined or not good enough. You’re procrastinating because one of these 5 reasons.

1. You have too many goals.
2. You are not passionate enough.
3. You are afraid of failure.
4. Your goal is overwhelming.
5. You lack a required resource.
6. You don’t allow for procrastination time.

1. You have too many goals.

Yes, I know you are immensely capable, but if you dilute your time, energy, mental and emotional capacity and money in many different directions, you’re not honoring neither of your goals.

Choose 1, not 2 not 3. O.N.E. And go for it!

2. You are not passionate enough.

No judgment here, more a reality check. Do you LIKE what you are doing? Are you excited about the end goal? Does it make you vibrate?

I started working on 3 businesses (already not following #1), which I fancily called work-streams: Smoovster - the program for people who want to move abroad, LUVS - the relationship education and coaching, and yoga teaching.

Smoovster had the most potential for financial success, or so I thought, and I started working on it. I wrote 3 books, created high-quality content videos, wrote articles, did the social media stuff. But, once quarantine started… well people can’t really move abroad during these times.

So, I decided I can allow myself to work on LUVS.

OMG! What a shift of energy! What an excitement! What creativity and new ideas! What. An. Ease. To. Work. On. This. Can I call this enthusiasm and passion? I sure can.

Choose a goal that would bring you out of your grave to work on it!

3. You are afraid of failure.

This is Mr. Husband’s George addition. I don’t understand this very good, but I’ll give it a try to explain.

I signed up for the Lasting Love Summit and sent in my speech on my LUVS concept to make relationships thrive. I listened to it today and the sound was terrible and I almost feel asleep at the sound of my voice instead of feeling energized. #fail.

I cringed at the beginning, but then I realized: OMG, I have improved so much since the! Wow, this is a true proof of my progress and I couldn’t have gotten here without the #fail from before.

Aim to fail MANY times. Make failure your purpose. Aim to have 3 #fails every week. And see what happens to your perception towards failure. “But I need to be perfect, otherwise I’m not good enough”.

TRY IT!

4. Your goal is overwhelming.

If you’re goal is to speak in front of 1 Million and to make 1 Billion dollars, that’s amazing! It’s awesome to have a great vision.

But it feels like it’s too big. Where do you even start? If you are like me, if your post only gets 77 likes or you only gain 1.3 subscribers per day, you feel like s**t.

My husband George is about the finish his own course on Business Glossary. He invested an estimate of 120 hours in creating it. His goal was to sell 10 courses. 

What?

When I heard this, like a good wife, I was gentle in my response and didn’t leave him because of his unambitious goals. But guess what? He already sold 14 courses as of today in the pre-sale phase.

How does he feel with every course he’s selling over 10? AMAZING! How would he feel if his goal was to sell 100? Probably not good enough…

Divide your goal in the smallest tasks possible and then celebrate yourself like crazy for each minor achievement (yay! I wrote this 2-sentence email #freneticapplause #stormycheers #standupovations).

5. You lack a required resource.

This is interesting. I find myself not doing what I need to do, because I don’t know how. This means I lack the knowledge or the skill. Which means I need to acquire the knowledge or the skill or stay stuck.

Now before you spend another $2,500 on the next online course, see maybe there’s a friend you can bounce ideas off. Or maybe there’s a free YouTube video that can show you how. Often things are easier than they seem. We just complicate them.

Identify what is missing for you in doing your next to do in achieving your goal: knowledge, money, skill, partnership, team? How will you get it?

Note: If you don’t know what needs to be done, go to #4. If you don’t feel like to do it, go to #2.

6. You don’t allow for procrastination time.

AHA! Gotcha!

Are you that type of person who wants to be productive day & night? From 5am to 11pm, and while sleeping you’re hoping to solve the unanswered questions from the previous day?

Oh, and you also want to meditate, exercise, journal, read, talk to your parents, be social and do everything flawlessly, without blinking and breaking a sweat, constantly with a relaxed, serene smile on your face? And also learning Cantonese on the side? Sorry, but you are not f**king Chuck Norris.

Assign time for what you define as “procrastination”, what science calls relaxation & release, recharging your batteries and… just being. If needed, force yourself to stay there, to read a non-self-help book, to watch a comedy or to water a flower (in case this doesn’t feel like a to do, like for me). I definitely need to force myself.

What were those again?

1. You have too many goals.
2. You are not passionate enough.
3. You are afraid of failure.
4. Your goal is overwhelming.
5. You lack a required resource.
6. You don’t allow for procrastination time.

What to do?

1. Choose only 1 goal.
2. Choose a goal that you would do in the after life as well.
3. Plan to fail weekly at least 3 times.
4. Divide the goal in many maaany actionable small steps and celebrate each success like crazy.
5. Identify what resource you are lacking and work on getting it.
6. Allocate time for procrastination. No, not 15 min. 2h/ per day. And force yourself to take it!

See what happens.

Here’s to goals, cheers!

Much love to you from me,

Diana