The Now Habit by Neil Fiore: Overcoming procrastination

How do you overcome procrastination? If you’re like most of us, you feel badly for a while then screw up your courage, swallow the distaste and make yourself do what ever it is that you’ve been avoiding. I recently read The Now Habit by Neil Fiore. The subtitle of his book is a strategic program for overcoming procrastination and enjoying guilt-free play.

The book is an easy read on how to overcome procrastination in 200 compact pages. Among the chapter headings you’ll find, why we procrastinate; how we procrastinate and how to talk to yourself. The author also throws in some real-world hints and tips on scheduling, meditation and living with a procrastinator.

I was able to read this book in a very short period of time. That’s good news for procrastinators who are eager to get to the solution. The meat and potatoes is that the author proscribes a method of reverse psychology to get yourself out of the blame game and into productivity.

Have you ever had someone tell you that you HAD to do something? Sure, we all have. Well the solution given in THE NOW HABIT is to schedule all about the good things that you have to do in your life first. Things like spending time with friends and family, exercising or doing something playful to help your creative juices flow. In essence, by focusing on the fun things in your schedule, and then committing to intensive 30 minute stretches of work that you’ll get a lot more done in a day.

The Now Habit also has some other unconventional strategies like starting a project with the worst possible quality work. The premise is that if you can do something badly, eventually your pride of ownership will kick in and you’ll come back and fix everything you’ve done poorly. However, in the mean time you will have at least started something. As every good procrastinator knows, starting can be one of the biggest anxieties when facing a large project.

If you’re interested in learning more about the universal epidemic of procrastination, why we do it, how to change it in your life, positive self-talk and the UNschedule strategy I’ve described above, I recommend you check out this uplifting book by Neil Fiore.

Will the book work for you? This blog post is being written using the above strategy. Within my eyesight there is both a Lindt chocolate, and a big shiny quarter to be deposited into my PLAY jar. (See more about my jars here.) These are both rewards I’ll be enjoying after I finish this concentrated 30 minute period of article writing. And I must say as much as I’m looking forward to the treat, I’m also enjoying the feeling that I’m really accomplishing something within a short period of time.

Try reading the book The Now Habit and conquer procrastination today.