Don't give yourself the time to think

Procrastination is the greatest danger we have at the corner of our minds, always rambling when there's something to do for the day. However, this doesn't happen only to you, as there are millions of people that have these thoughts before doing what they know is best for them, even the most accomplished ones. The thing that differentiates a responsible person who is in touch with his/her life and someone who doesn't is that he actually gets past this initial resistance and puts the required effort to make some progress for a determined period of time. You might think that they do It all day without even flinching, and for some It can be true, though a more realistic approach is to break the time into little chunks in order to make the task seem less threating and achievable. That's why in this article I present you with a rule that follows this train of though, allowing you to work uninterruptedly in whatever you set yourself for a reasonable amount of time, 5 minutes. Let's begin by talking about why we're so resilient to sit down and do things:

Fear or Overthinking?

According to evolution, our brain has three parts that represent a stage of this process. There is the lymbic brain, that part mostly used by reptiles, which triggers those fight or flight system of your brain, providing you with the required dose of adrenaline required to tackle situations of imminent danger. The problem with this, is that even in the face of something not threating, as It might be getting your tasks done, will equally shoot up because of the discomfort you are feeling. Accompanied by this comes another area of the brain, developed since the appearance of mammals, the emotional brain. This system has as Its main function the use of empathy as a mean to connect what a whole group is thinking, along with the resources to show If a particular member of it feels pain or discomfort. Whenever the emotional brain gets triggered, It will send a lot of signals charging us with uneasiness about the many duties we have to perform, even being able to mimic the distress of physical pain. Then, It comes the logic brain or neocortex, which is the feature that separates humans from other species, permitting us to think about thins in an abstract and conscious way, analyzing many scenarios and coming up with solutions to them. Obviously, this is the part that we use the most when doing our work, and because of this you might think that It is flawless, however, It can be a real "headache" as It can also trick us into paralysis by analysis, what happens when you get stuck into a line of thinking about a particular situation and you can't get into action rationalizing your way out of It.

Now that we know how our whole nervous system generates the distress that is associated with the fear of doing things and procrastionation, we can begin to talk about what the 5 minute rule refers to:

The 5 Minute Rule:

What this little tip tells us, as It was mentioned by Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, is that If you can't get yourself to do something, you just have to bargain and set a timer, forcing yourself to get into that particular thing for at least 5 minutes. Once the time is finished, you can leave and do another things. The good thing about this, is that when people try It, most of the time they don't just spend 5 minutes in It, usually dedicating more and switching into their work gear. What this demonstrates us is that what paralyzes us is not our resistance to the activity we should do, though the idea of sitting to do It. That's why this rule is so powerful, as It puts the procrastinating part of our mind to the side and lets us make the required effort to advance in what we were avoiding.

With this said, I hope that with the information presented in this article you could have gathered information about this simple though effective principle, why you procrastinate and how to combat It through Its use, making things a little bit easier by just pushing you into action. Thank you for your support and good luck!