How I Eradicated Procrastination By Organizing My Ambition

Every year I have the most outrageously ambitious goals, and I don't achieve them. At the beginning of each year, I would set out a daunting list, with no real plan of action or habit to establish, and unsurprisingly, I would find ways to procrastinate until I was discouraged from believing in my ability.

Somehow, that never connected to poor planning & habits until this year. Thankfully, I acted on that insight, and now I'm here to share my method for helping other massively ambitious people like me overcome procrastination and create the life they love. And I can summarize it in three words: Goals, routines, and milestones.

A major paradigm shift has been defining my goals by how many hours I dedicate to intensely focused work rather than the outcome of the work.

There is a specific type of work session that I qualify as hours of work. It's called flow (click to learn more), and that is when I exclusively focus my attention on the task at hand.

Creating Effective Goals

My goal is to have 15 hours of flow dedicated to a project by the end of the month. By creating this goal, I remove the pressure of reaching a specific outcome and focus on refining my creative process. And the result of my work is just a reflection of the quality of my process.

Remove the pressure of reaching a specific outcome and focus on refining your process. Because the quality of your result is a reflection of the quality of your process.

It also eradicates the fears or confusion that create perfectionism that manifests as procrastination. Because as long as I sit down and focus, then I've achieved my goal. And I know that as long as I sit down and focus, I'll create something impressive to me. How can perfectionism ruin the simple goal of sitting down and not getting distracted? It can't.

Dedicate To A Simple Routine

Next is the most critical part of planning, routine. Mine is to sit down and enter the flow state for my project(s). As long as I do that, then I've achieved my goal. See how easy that is? Choose a simple routine, and follow it daily.

But it's absolutely essential to set aside a time and place to be undisturbed as much as possible for this kind of work.

That is "doing the work," and the quality of your attention defines the quality of your work. So seriously, remove distractions and dive in as deep as possible every time.

Use Milestones To Reflect & Refine

Finally are milestones. I have two kinds of milestones. The first is regarding the hours of flow state I dedicate to a project. The second is a specific event or task that I want to accomplish in that amount of time.

For example, by March, I want to have 35 hours of flow state attention dedicated to my art, and I want to have enough pieces to host a gallery. That shows me if I've put in the proper quality & amount of hours and if my process is efficient.

And it's that simple.

Summary

Track your goals, routines, and milestones in your calendar to be mindful of when you need to sit down and focus. Then exclusively commit to that alone. Don't commit to an overly specific result, but commit to a certain quality of work and focus within a predetermined amount of time. Then allow your outcome to unfold in a uniquely creative way from that mindset. Remove the pressure to achieve something specific, but retain the quality of requiring excellence from yourself.

If you're reviewing this, here's a simple way to state it all:

1. Create goals based on the hours of undistracted focus you need to dedicate to your work and a simple goal that is easy to recall quickly.
2. Create a routine that moves you towards your goal by setting aside a specific time to engage in a focused work session, follow it daily.
3. Create milestones that keep you on track to achieve your goal.

Your milestones show you if your process is efficient or if it needs to be improved.

This simple method helped me organize my ambition and eradicate the fear or confusion born out of perfectionism that led to procrastination. Now, instead of fretting over exactly what I need to do, I have a simple goal and routine. Create excellent work by sitting down for around 90 minutes and concentrating wholly on whatever I am creating.

Follow me to read my next article about how I enter the flow state, what it's like, and the neurological underpinnings of it! And please tip if this article was helpful to you!

(Also, yes, I have another year of outrageously ambitious goals but this year I'm uniquely equipped to achieve them.)