365 Days With Self-Discipline: 365 Life-Altering Thoughts on Self-Control, Mental Resilience, and Success

Day 37: On Initial Resistance

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

—Leonardo da Vinci

 

35

To avoid procrastination at work, I use a rule I like to call “the zero-

second rule”: the moment I realize that I’m wasting my time to avoid work,

I  immediately  stop  whatever  unproductive  thing  I’m  doing  and  start

working.

If  I  let  myself  ponder  whether  I  want  to  start  working  or  not,  my

resistance will only grow, and soon, it will be so difficult to overcome that I

may fail to accomplish anything productive for the rest of the day.

This  trick  works  because  (like  Leonardo  da  Vinci  said)  resistance  is

greatest at the beginning. Once you start performing an unpleasant task and

gain  some  momentum,  it’s  easier  to  stick  to  the  task  than  to  give  up  and

return to procrastination.

Whenever  you  catch  yourself  putting  off  something  unpleasant,  act

right away and deal with it now. The sooner you act, the sooner you’ll be

done with it.

For  example,  I  always  wash  the  cookware  I  used  to  cook  my  dinner

before I eat my meal. This way I can eat my dinner without the unpleasant

thought in the back of my mind that I’ll not only have to wash the dishes,

but also the pots and pans I used for cooking.

Small habits like that can help establish a habit of choosing to do the

hard  things  now  instead  of  letting  all  the  hard  tasks  accumulate  like  a

backlog  at  work.  When  you  adopt  this  habit,  you’ll  greatly  reduce  the

impact of procrastination on your life — and enjoy more tranquility to boot!

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