Gaining Motivation | How to cure procrastination!

Procrastination is a really bad habit to get used to, it always sneaks up on us when we are working, when you hear a notification from your phone or when you are full of boredom. Procrastination stops us from reaching our full potential and today I will show you how to cure procrastination!


Just for a heads up, this post is going to be really long. I will provide you with steps you can take to cure your procrastination whether it is for developing or studying

Note: I will not be adding any steps that are to only help some people, all of these are guaranteed to help you with studying, or developing.

What is procrastination?

Procrastination is a habit of delaying a project, homework or anything work related even routines, procrastination can be caused from lack of motivation and being bored from the topic you are working on, for example studying is boring and that’s why I don’t want to study.

Getting into this habit more and more can lower your success rate by a lot, and eventually you will end up being a failure.

Anyways enough reading, let’s get motivated!


  1. Breaking down time

This one is a really important way to cure your procrastination, let’s say you have to study for 30 minutes, going for 30 minutes straight will lead you to less than 30 minutes. A way to work 30 minutes is splitting them with breaks for example every 10 minutes, you get a 5 minute break and it repeats and repeats until it is 30 minutes, in each you work on a small task

Here’s how it works: If you tell yourself you are going to work for 3 - 5 hours straight you will get distracted simply but, if you had to work 10 minutes on a small task, your expectancy becomes higher and more expectancy means more work and less procrastinating


  1. Low-Priority Tasks

Setting your task to less than you are able to do.

For example, if you wanted to work on your project for 30 minutes every day, you usually would skip some days, the reasoning for this is if you don’t have time to work 30 minutes every day.

Lowering your expectations to 2 minutes or 4 minutes a day makes it seem more easier so you are more likely motivated to do it, by lowering your expectations you are most likely to overpass your time more than usual as you think you have more time to do it


  1. Parkingson’s law

Wiki: Parkinson's law - Wikipedia

according to Parkinson’s law , “if someone is given a week to complete a task should really only take them a day to finish, they will often end up unnecessarily stretching out the task, so that it will take them the whole week to complete it.”

Overcoming Parkinson’s law is one of the best things to do!

You can force yourself to use Parkinson’s law by making a deadline or a release date for your game, this HUGELY gives you more motivation than usual!

For example: I am making a game and I am going to make a release date for it, let’s say I want to release it in one month but I end up finishing it half a month, this makes me stretch it out to a month!

This is a massive part of curing motivation and you won’t learn this entirely from one day.


  1. Avoiding Distractions

Distractions are a massive part in procrastination, removing distractions permanently is almost impossible to do, so the best thing to do is minimize distractions at your house or go to the library or the nearest coffee shop

Turning on Airplane mode and Do not disturb is a way to avoid distractions, make a place where there are no distractions, like a work desk. If your home isn’t a good place for working, I recommend going to a library


  1. Self Discipline

Disciplining yourself is a big part of curing your procrastination

One way to learn self discipline is to start small, practice daily, increase

This is a huge topic I can not cover in here but I have a video that explains it very well!

Link: Self-Discipline | Why It’s Important & How to Master Self-Control - YouTube


  1. What makes up motivation

images
The equation of motivation is really simple, and all of the steps increase expectancy, value, impulsiveness and delay


49 Likes

Good ideas, one thing I’ll see a lot is a mistake people make in freelancing. I see a lot of developers who contact everyone who is hiring their field of development. The developer contacts like 5 different people and doesn’t start any of them. He or she then falls behind. This problem is one I see a lot, and I’m a prime example of someone who’s done this before.
In addition, a big solution to procrastination is brute starting the project/whatever it is immediately. This way, after some progress you’ll have some motivation to continue.

4 Likes

1, 2 and 4 are actually really useful to me! Thanks for this.

1 Like

Thanks for reading it :smiley:

1 Like

I am a master at procrastinating. For me, I can have productive periods for as long as weeks and then go in a slump for a similar amount of time. I just can’t seem to get in a rhythm. Procrastination at a higher level is kind of keeping the productive periods in check. It’s the “I work better under pressure” kind of feeling, making sure you make the deadlines while still fitting in the other stuff you want to work on. It’s not all about wasting time, it’s just minimizing time spent on stuff you aren’t that adamant about (homework, annoying bug fixes, you get it by now).

I think not having deadlines is more of an issue than procrastination itself. I’m also not a psychologist so consider my viewpoint as biased procrastinator.

Self discipline is a great skill to learn for procrastinators too, eventually you will get people scheduling out their procrastinated routines for the week. At that point it’s reaching “organized chaos” level of logic but again, biased opinion, I am in that boat too.

But that’s if you know what you’re doing. If you’re an amateur and you don’t have something else to fill your time then learn to avoid procrastinating. It will benefit you in the long run.

7 Likes

This is so extremely helpful to me. I am an ultimate procrastinator and it has become a huge issue, especially recently. I’m going to take each and every one of these points into thought and try my best to stop the downward slope of procrastination. Thank you so much for sharing this!

3 Likes

This helped me a lot, I will bookmark this and use it everyday! :smiley:

1 Like

when youre reading this while procrastinating on the devforum :flushed:

you saw nothing

1 Like

This here seems like a really useful resource post. I’m gonna save it, and come back to it later

(hahah i know i’m not funny. trust me, i know)

I’ve really got to thank you for making this. You’ve not only helped me developer-wise but with school too.