How to Develop Self Discipline and Stop Procrastination

1. Introduction: In this Skillshare class, I'm going to show you how you can stop procrastinating and become more productive. I will share and take you through various techniques that will help with your self-development and also self-discipline, allowing you to understand how to correctly achieve the goals that you set without wasting any time in a fast-moving modern world that demands a lot from our attention with many distractions such as social media, it is very easy to forget about ourselves and our own ambitions in the things that we want to achieve. If you want to begin and take action on your ambitions, join me here for this Skillshare class. 2. Resistance and Self Discipline: First let's establish some of the factors as to why as humans, we'd like to procrastinate and put things off. Most commonly, this comes down to two different factors. First is a lack of focus. The second is resistance to change. Sometimes it's humans, we can struggled to fully commit to doing something because we haven't fully conceptualized in our head what the end outcome will be. For example, with a lack of focus, you can't follow through on your initial idea because you're not sure what the outcome would be or what the benefits are if doing so because sometimes the best things for us are incredibly hard and uncomfortable without purpose behind the action. This is where you struggled to find the motivation, which is why most of the time we don't ever begin on things out, or we start and then we give up very quickly. The next factor is resistance to change. Primitively, we prefer to stay in a comfort zone. It's almost like a survival instinct. As a human, we don't like to put ourselves in an uncomfortable situation because instinctively that's not what you want to do when you're out there trying to know so to survive as a human. That's why at times we find it difficult to go up and talk to strangers because we're fearful of what the outcome would be. We don't know what that person's like, what's their personality? Will we get on? Will they be aggressive, Whatever. We sometimes avoid eye contact, talk to someone in the train because it's so awkward and uncomfortable. And this is why sometimes certain groups of people have a very close circle of friends. They keep it the same circle. And sometimes these people are even the same group of friends from when they were at school. So they go all the way from school to being altogether. The reason why a lot of people do this is because they are completely in control of the situation and that within their sort of comfort limits. And even though there isn't anything really wrong with the things we've just discussed. It's important to be aware of them so you understand the factors why that is stopping you from getting on with doing those harder tasks that are going to be extremely beneficial. So the first step towards stopping procrastination and self-development is gaining clarity. This will then provide an outcome. Once you have the outcome, you can then go through the uncomfortable and the pain barrier of pushing for it because, you know, it's going to be worth it. An example of this for me personally, is going to the gym over the summer and winter periods. I've been going to the gym very early in the morning, sometimes 430 AM. And the reason behind this has a few different factors that all would resolve in a great outcome. The first one is because of my job as I am a YouTuber. I sit in a chair for NIH entire day. I work sometimes 12 to 14 hours a day. Not often involves editing at a computer. For my health, I was it was very detrimental, although it wasn't putting any weight on because I'm a pretty skinny guy, wasn't great from a health, so I need to get a bit of motion going. The second fact that it's to do with the YouTube comments, because I am pretty slim, I often get ridiculous comments referring to my arms and I should go and lift the weights so I don't moan about a product being particularly heavy and that it should be slightly lighter in weight. Something completely unrelated as to why I might find an iPhone being heavy, but it would result in disarming people, which then would result in less negativity. Probably the third and most important fact that it has nothing to do with the heat is on YouTube in the comments section. It's that I actually wanna do it. And it also gets me up super early, resulting in more hours in the day. And then with all of this extra time, it means I can arrive at work a lot earlier on, energized and ready to rock because I've done that hour at the gym. And overall, it means I can get more done within a day because it feels so much longer. And there's also the added benefits of finishing slightly earlier because I started sooner, meaning that I can use the evening a little bit more to actually do some enjoyable things. 3. Remove Temptations: Do you ever have moments when you spend time scrolling on social media without any purpose, and then you close the app and feel completely destroyed inside. You just wasted 2030 minutes if doing such and meaningful things. Well, I personally began to buy myself experiencing this more and more and more as months went on. And I chose to completely delete both Instagram and also Facebook. These two platforms in particular, don't really contribute anything towards my YouTube channel, my online business and what I'm actually trying to build. And there were times where I just found myself scrolling on their seeing pointless pitches and people going out to festivals, club nightclubs getting drunk. And it was just, my feet were just fell. Have drunk videos and all these points of stuff. People will pretending that they were having a fantastic time when in reality they probably weren't. Because if you had time to film the moment, then you weren't really enjoying it. So removing these, reduce the amount of dopamine that was being created on the social media apps, just scrolling and liking. This dealt mean detox meant that more menial tasks felt way more exciting when I completed them. Because if I would complete writing a script for a YouTube video or editing a YouTube video, or sometimes even filming a video tasks and at times can be quite boring. When you would complete that and take that off your to-do list, it would give you a surge. The same surgery we're getting from just scrolling on social media. But it actually done something productive that contributed to my future life that I'm trying to grow to step one for me when removing temptations was studied in social media, so I had no option to indulgent and productive tasks. The second one that was linked to this was removing further distractions. This was also linked to using my mobile phone and putting it into Do Not Disturb in the key hours. When I was working a lot of the time I was struggling to get into a state of flow because my phone was ringing, text messages coming through or whatever it was, e-mails in particular distracting me a lot and I'm not even talking about ones that are related to work. It's primarily marketing emails talking about new products. I always like checking stuff out online shopping. So all of these different things was constantly grabbing my attention. Meaning that I was only working in shorter bursts when I was editing or planning and things that I was tasked with taking way longer because every like basically 1015 minutes, I was wasting two for five minutes browsing on the internet. It's something that's particularly useful on Mac OS in particular is the do not disturb mode. You can go over here. It can just throw your entire computer into Do Not Disturb. So no notifications come through on your desktop as well as on your mobile phone. Furthermore, with the new iOS 15 and new Mac OS, you can also use this feature called focus and width. This, you can take this Do Not Disturb to the next level by setting certain routines, which includes automated replies, as well as blocking apps completely. So you can't even open certain apps on your phone during those allocated work hours. I already have a class here on Skillshare that takes you through the process of planning a perfect workweek from start to finish on a highly recommend checking out that class for further detail on this topic. But in there I discussed the concept of using time management, but more specifically the technique if time blocking across a day. And this entails for me on a Sunday evening saturating out time blocks across the entire week for when I'm going to achieve particular tasks. And the concept works very similar to when we used to go to school and we would get our little timetable and it would go, you have maths it like ten AM, then you've got English for two hours and then sports or wherever. It's the exact same theory, I just follow a timetable that I set myself on the Sunday or all orientating around what's going to happen that week you're around like Zoom calls editing what videos need to be filmed? What I'm delayed on because I didn't quite finish it from the previous week. So it's a constant moving platform on a week-by-week basis, but it gives me that focus from Monday all the way through to the end of the week from the very beginning with time blocking, it enables you to start your week correctly from Monday straight away, you can start with a purpose. Furthermore, you can take this into a further detail with like sorted jewel time blocking. So you have two different times, one for work and then one for free time. This type of method works very well if you have quite an active social life. So you know, when you need to allocate hours to work in how many per week versus the hours where you're going to be out socializing, doing all those types of things. I personally don't really use this method. I just plan it all out for working. And then about 09:00 PM at night, I have about an hour or so of free time to do whatever I like. 4. Getting Started: One of my favorite kinds of videos to create is a getting started guide wherever that be for a piece of software, a program, or a physical product. But the same concept behind these video ideas also relates to your personal life. One of the simplest ways to destroy procrastination is to just get started. But saying you're going to get started is much easier than applying yourself to the actual process. Most people overthink this Getting Started process when in reality there are just simple steps that you need to take. Just like we have a getting started guide for a piece of software or a product in those YouTube videos and courses that I create online, I take you through actionable steps that result in a process of knowledge and understanding how to use your Adobe or whatever those programs are. Well, procrastination works exactly the same. Getting Started results in progress. But in order to attain the progress, you need to follow three key steps. The first roadblock caused by overthinking is lack of inspiration. This is the first excuse. People always say when they don't want to get started using a musician as an example, you may have the goal of releasing your first album, but in order to do that, you need to maybe record 506 songs. Well, the first executes would be you would boot up your music production software and then you will go out today, I'm lacking inspiration. I'll try again tomorrow to write the very first song for this goal that I wanted to achieve when in reality something is creative as music can still be produced regardless of whether you are inspired or not. So for a musician, this would include just recording a guitar chord progression. So you've got to record guitar. You're just going to literally play a random guitar chord progression. The first thing that you come up with by doing this simple step that takes 0 effort, results in action. Action then leads to further progress because after you've recorded the guitar and you actually discover it was quite good what he did. You might then sing a melody. Then from this point you begin to build out an entire song. He then add your drums, a bit of bass, guitar, some more vocals like guitar, it, some effects, delays, reverbs, and also it's in, it's suddenly from having 0 inspiration, you've created a 34 minute demo sauce. Then from these progress, you discover you now have motivation because you've went through the pain barrier of feeling uninspired but still forcing yourself to do something, even if it wasn't going to be that great, you suddenly feel fantastic about yourself and you feel motivated to go into it again. This then results in a loop of success because from motivation becomes inspiration. And then forever this can continue propelling. If you sustain your work ethic towards what you're trying to achieve. And if we remember for this musician, it was to record an album from that simple act of just getting started, even when you didn't feel like it, The task was way easier than you first build up in your head. And I experienced this on a daily basis. I've got a huge YouTube video to film. Gotta test the product bench market, compare the scores against another laptop or computer to show which one is faster. And you think, Wow, I've got a 1000 things. They've got achieve here. But if you just get started on one, then you do the second, the third, the fourth, and then suddenly you have the video completed in a much quicker time-space than if he'd sat there for 23 hours thinking, Oh, I can't really be bothered doing this today. And then because you just crack on and get started, you end up actually being more productive and finishing a bit earlier and getting to go to bed sooner than if you had waited and waited and waited and went down to the final few hours and crunch time before you had to upload that video. 5. Prioritize your time: The next biggest weakness, but people self-discipline is using the excuse of simply not having enough time. I do completely appreciate in this fast-moving modern world, we have so many different things demanding our attention and understanding, which is the correct area to prioritize at a particular moment can be pretty difficult. But there are a few techniques that I like to use across the period of a year to ensure that I am focused at what I'm doing. This is to do lists plus goal-setting. Now I already have a complete course here on Skillshare that I recommend checking out that specifically focused on setting the correct goals and also how to use goals in a more productive way than just being overly ambitious and not following through on them. So I highly recommend checking out that class next after you've completed this one for a more detailed deep dive into this particular topic and the processes behind that. But fundamentally, these two things combined enable you to have a targeted focus to your approach. Firstly, for me, Goals yearly, I set my goals when the year is about to conclude, ready for the following one. So then that way I know what it is that I want to achieve within the next 12 months. So this thing gives me a roadmap of where I'm going to get to at the end of the year. Next, I then use to-do lists. Daily plus weekly. This is commonly dictated by how large the task is, whether I can achieve that in a day or whether it's almost a project that's going to be completed across a progression of days. The power of using to-do lists are that they lay out achievable steps. And then these achievable steps break down the logic goal and almost sort of a reward you along the way as progression track is to ensure that you keep that my main motivation sustained for the morning you're setting these to-do list. You need to be quite specific. So a simple one would be applying for a job. So you maybe need to look for a new job or whatever it is you're looking for a promotion to change in your career path. A common goal or a to-do list go with B applied for job applications. That's a pretty simple to-do lists. You would go ahead and apply for a few and then you would take that off once you've done it. But the problem is, it isn't specific, it's so broad. You have no idea what this is going to entail. This tends sometimes causes that sense of procrastination because you feel overwhelmed, right? I need to apply for some jobs. But how many jobs or what types of jobs in particular, more digestible to do list approach would be to go apply for five job applications. This way it is the exact same to-do list, but with a target to follow up on. And then across the day, you can track it. You can go right 0 out of 51 out of 52 out of five. And then at the end you go right, great. We've done five out of five because along the way you're tracking it, you might end up going all will push and do a couple of mole. We did seven out of five job applications. So this way you end up rewarding yourself by exceeding your own expectations gives you a huge dopamine hit. So then every day you continue to keep on pushing and making more heat you videos, releasing more courses, releasing more videos, more products, building your online thing, socializing more, whatever it is, your ambitions. Our next, you want to set deadlines for these to-do lists. As I previously said, I use my goals is sort of yearly trackers and the deadline is the 31st of December. Once that year has concluded, that is when I hoped to achieve those targets that I like to have set. But commonly what people do is they set this goal and target and then they constantly move it back and then move it back and go. I've got another week to do that. I'll do that next week. I'll do that tomorrow. I'm a bit tied to the I'll do that tomorrow, do that next month. And then suddenly it's about three months and they still haven't started on that initial target. And the days are just taking away in a losing all that time because that time is gone. You can't really go and get it back by being strict and setting yourself a deadline, you give yourself a bit of urgency, a sense of urgency to prioritize the time on the task at hand and not waste any of it by procrastinating. This goes back to that same concept that we've been discussing throughout this entire course. A little bit like going back to school whenever you had an essay to do or an assignment, you would always have an end date when that is due. If you miss this due date, there was always consequences and that was failure and either losing because you'd fail to complete the class or you'd lost Mark, See you then didn't do as well on the whole module collectively and had to reset it. You lost even more times. You're losing, losing all the time because you didn't achieve that particular deadlines. This meant for 99.9% of students, you would try and get your essays done by the due date so you can go and complete your course and progress. So it's important to keep that similar concept even when you're an adult and you don't have somebody setting these for you, and that's where the daily to-do list come into play or weekly, once you combine prioritizing your time with some of the things we discussed in the removing temptations lesson. Suddenly you have hours and hours available within day because you're not wasting it on social media, playing video games or whatever. Suddenly you have an extra 2345 hours in the evening that enabled you to do things that are more productive, that will benefit you greatly in 1015 years time, as opposed to scrolling through Instagram that night, That's not going to really benefit you in any way. 6. External Independence: A huge mindset shift that you have to develop in order to master self-discipline is understanding the concept of locus of control. Locus of control is the degree to which people believe that they are in control over the outcome of the events in their life, as opposed to external factors dictating this, you can either have internal locus of control or external locus of control using these two people as examples of this, one has got internal locus of control. One is dictated by external. The key difference is the mindset of these two people. The person with internal control is much more positive and can dictate the outcome of their circumstances on their own. For example, they would think I can make stuff happen. Compared to thinking, why should I even bother? In addition, they would have a confident attitude of look at what I can do, I can do. Versus why does this always happen to me? One person takes accountability for their actions and appreciates it. They dictate the outcome, whereas won't always blames other people as to why they don't achieve anything. And relatable example of this would be receiving test results from a school exam. If you have an external mindset, you would blame the teacher if your results weren't too great. If you received your test back, you scored really low. You go at typical that teacher doesn't like me, always mark in my work down. And also the questions that came up on the test weren't the ones that are revised. I was just unlucky. Whereas if you hadn't internal mindset, you would take accountability of the terrible test result and go, Well, to be fair, I played on the Xbox too much and played video games. I didn't really revise and I only did a quick ten minutes revision before the test. It's my fault for not putting in enough efforts. Somebody with an internal locus of control says you can make things happen versus the person who the external says things always happen to me. Understanding this concept provides clarity on those two types of people in the world. Someone with external mindset that constantly blames others for not achieving things. They may blame their parents for not becoming a famous footballer because the parents didn't Satan to football training enough when in reality, they could have got the bus to football training if they wanted it that badly and took internal control over that situation versus people that are internal locus of control and much more positive and always commit that 100% effort to ensure that they can try and make something happen. Here's an example that would apply to me because I am a YouTuber. External factors that I cannot control my number of subscribers. I can't dictate people clicking that red button, but what I can dictate is the amount of videos that I upload. So I have complete control over my video upload count. Which would then in turn, the more videos in theory that I upload, it would influence this result anyways, the next thing that I don't have control over is YouTube promoting my content. I don't know. I don't have control over the YouTube algorithm. However, you spell that word and definitely not like that, but I don't have control over the YouTube algorithm, but I can try my best to influence it by doing a better job, a video quality, better video editing, making better thumbnails. And also really spending the time at thinking about titles for the content as well. Because all of these would dictate to humans actually reacting to that content to then sort of spock this algorithm instead of sitting around going on my no one, no one watches my videos, I don't get any views. It's the YouTube algorithms fault why my channel isn't successful. So I can dictate all these other factors that contribute to these ones that will be influenced by my hard work even out if everything that I've discussed within this Skillshare class today, I hope that this is the biggest takeaway. That no matter how ambitious and huge your goal is, there's always parts of it that you can control and dictate and you can never use the executed. Oh, I'm not feeling that motivated. I was just unlucky. I don't get as many opportunities as these other people because that's all external locus of control. Whereas if you can commit internally and realize that, yes, you do have control over these factors by doing these other things, then that's a huge mindset change that will make you a winner rather than being someone that gets negative and bitter and blaming other people for why they didn't become a millionaire or whatever. Another relatable example using a YouTuber would be people starting a YouTube channel. Excuses such as my camera isn't good enough. I don't have a good enough microphone. My computer isn't quick and fancy enough to edit the videos. All of these different reasons people throw out there, so they don't ever make their very first YouTube channel when in reality, in their pocket, their smartphone can do everything that they've just said that they cannot, because every smartphone, even if it's for five years old at this point, still can probably shoot full HD or even for k, like some of the newer models can do. Even I that has all of these fancy equipment that people say they don't have still uses the iPhone 13 Mini, which isn't even a pro iPhone with the best cameras in some of my YouTube video clips. For self-discipline, you want to begin to develop an internal locus of control. And the more internal that is, becomes the most solutions you will find to the problems and roadblocks that you face. 7. Thanks for Watching!: Remember to check out some of the other Skillshare classes that are referenced throughout this course as this will expand your knowledge further on some of the topics in theories we've discussed within this class. If watching these videos has been beneficial to you, make sure you following me here on Skillshare so you can catch any future courses that I intend to release. But as always, I've been been rolling. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next ball.