Clear To Neutral

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?

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.