Making Better Sleep a New Year's Resolution

Next year, the gym won't seem so daunting. The flu won't seem so intimidating. The writing assignment won't seem so intimidating. That's the good news. The bad news is there are people, like my wife, who have changed their New Year's resolutions to actually... stop procrastinating. That sounds wrong, but it's a big part of what we're talking about. Procrastination. At least, I think it is. I don't know anything about science.

I think what happens is people resolve to change bad habits. Or maybe they want to resolve to change bad behaviors. Things like saying "no" or cutting back on alcohol. They can resolve to change these behaviors for all the wrong reasons. For example, I'm resolving to stop drinking alcohol. Potentially, I'm going to learn how to cut back. Potentially, I'm going to reduce the amount that I drink so that I'm not an alcoholic. That's going to be a huge change.

In some ways, procrastination isn't a bad habit, right? If you're driving down the road, you think of all the reasons not to leave. But the real reason that you should just go, the real reason you should just go, is that it will get you where you want to go. It'll be faster. It'll be easier. Furthermore, it'll be less stressful. You have a reason to leave.

When it comes to important things, like health, work, education, physical things, things like that, you don't have that excuse. If you're feeling that you're procrastinating, you may have a real reason. Some studies have been done showing that procrastination is linked with ADHD. It's been associated with depression. It's even been associated with anxiety.

Furthermore, it's very difficult for people to make that leap from saying, "I procrastinated because I didn't want to do this," to looking at the reasons why. So, how do you deal with procrastination? If you resolve to stop procrastinating in 2018, what do you do?

You Stop Feeling Procrastination By Reconnecting To The "Why"

Let's look at some research and some things that help people break a procrastination habit.

The first thing is, as you said, stop trying to fix the problem. Sometimes it's going to be too late to do the right thing. Sometimes it may be too hard. That's why you might ask yourself why should I do this anyway? For example, say you want to stop procrastinating by going to the gym, and you don't have any physical reasons for doing that other than you're lazy. Maybe you can create reasons, but I've never seen any research on that. Possibly you're tired of having to work out or eat healthy. Possibly your job doesn't require that. Perhaps you just want to stop being a procrastinator. Those are the types of reasons that you can come up with that can help you break a bad habit.

You might also say, I'm going to go to the gym, and I'm going to lose weight. I'm going to be physically stronger. That's hard to say, I'm going to be physically stronger. The closest thing that I've ever seen is that they say, if you want to quit smoking, you can make a goal to not smoke for a week or a day, whatever, but the next time you want to smoke, you've got to find some way to make it interesting, that it's something that will motivate you.

When it comes to why do I want to do this, you could set some goals. For example, say you want to get a lot of work done today. Maybe that's a difficult thing to do in the middle of the day. So, set some goals that might help you.

The second thing that you can do is, you can ask yourself what is the "why" that's driving me? A lot of times people are interested in resolving a procrastination problem, but they're not interested in the reasons why. Why do you want to make changes to your life, to break a bad habit, in the first place?