We often procrastinate because it always seems like there is
one hidden thing holding us.
It is this one thing that makes us delay and procrastinate
and most people are not aware
of it. Yet, if you could eliminate it from your life you
could kiss procrastination goodbye and
kick it out the door.
Friction
Most of the time our procrastination is due to the fact that
we have to jump hurdles before
we can actually do the task we want to do. For example: you
jump into the kitchen with
the task of preparing dinner, but a lot of the dishes you
need are in the sink dirty from
lunch. All of a sudden you now have to wash all the dishes
before you can start cooking.
Before you can do the main activity that you set out to do
(cooking) you have to do all
these other things (cleaning) before you can start to cook.
You can see how friction,
having to wash the dirty dishes can make you procrastinate
when it comes to cooking
dinner.
If you make it hard for yourself to start, that's where you
are most likely to procrastinate.
For example: You take a break for lunch and leave your desk
in a mess with your work
and important documents all over the place. Half an hour
later you come back to get
some more work done. But do you really want to work at a
desk that looks like this?
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| A messy desk (Yeah, but that Camera is nice) |
The Solution - Clear to Neutral (CTN)
Let me use an analogy here, the cleaning of a grill. In a
restaurant, cleaning the grill is
very important. It ensures that it will last longer, the
food cooked on it will taste better and
it will prevent bacteria from growing on the grill. Every
night before the restaurant closes
the chef will always give the grill a clean, so when he
comes back in the morning it is ready
to use straight away.
This is exactly the idea behind Clear to Neutral. The reason
it is called CTN is because
whenever you complete an activity you put everything back to
a neutral position. CTN
prevents you from procrastinating in the future. When you
clean up your environment
there will be no friction for the 'future you' to
procrastinate over, thus making it easier for
the 'future you' to start.
Clear to Neutral is a post-habit activity. By this I mean
that each time you finish a main
activity, you do your post-activity (CTN) afterwards. When
you Clear to Neutral after your
set activity, you are getting everything ready for the next
time. For example: you clean the
kitchen and do not leave any dirty dishes after lunch (or
any meal for that case) so you can
easily start cooking with no friction. The same goes for
your desk. Put all your paper, pen
and etc back into a neutral position ready for the next time
you sit down to get some work
done.
What Now?
Clear to Neutral can be applied to any habit or any activity
you repeat. So take a
few minutes now and think about where you could add a CTN to
your daily activities.
The 'future you' will be thankful for the 1-2 minutes you
take in the present to Clear to
Neutral. Yeah, it may seem too simple, but the 1-2 minutes
you invest to Clear to Neutral
will make a huge difference to your productivity. Imagine
how different your life will be
when you hardly ever procrastinate.
