The Hemingway Post: Beating procrastination and staying consistent

9 PM, pencil in hand, hoping for a miracle. This is what it all came down to…

For the next three hours, I would painstakingly write word after word, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph. 

What was I writing you may ask?

My 6th-grade history essay that would make or break my final grade in the class (this is a serious life-or-death situation).

After pouring blood sweat and tears into my writing, I walked into class the next morning, essay in hand with my chin held high. 

Did I do the unthinkable? Did I get the grade I wanted? Did my hard work pay off?

Yes, yes, and yes.

I actually did it.

However, there are some important details I left out…

Howdy,

It’s that time of the week again. Welcome back to the Hemingway Post, your one-stop shop for insight and advice on personal growth. 

This week, I want to talk about how we can beat procrastination and stay consistent with the things that matter. 

You’re probably wondering what details I left out of my story. Well, I forgot to mention that I had 5 weeks to complete my essay. 

That's right, 5 weeks. 

I had 840 total hours to write a couple of pages, and I didn’t even look at the prompt until 9 PM the night before it was due. 

Sound familiar?

I think most of us struggle with procrastination in some form or another. I’m sure you have a list of things to get done that you put off until the last minute. I sure do. 

This week, I needed to put a parking pass sticker on my car for the next school year. Pretty easy right? Well… not really.

Instead of getting this 5-minute task done right away, I waited a whole week to do it.

I sat down and thought about all the times I told myself, “I’ll do it later,” and was amazed at how many there were. These simple tasks were being neglected, even if they were important. 

So, I started implementing a solution into my daily life:

If something takes less than 5 minutes, do it now.

By doing a task right after it comes to mind, we eliminate time to make excuses. And if we don’t have an excuse, we can complete the task without unnecessary resistance. 

Although it’s only been a couple of days, I’ve gotten more stuff done. It has saved me lots of time, effort, and worry.

I highly recommend using this strategy to shorten your to-do list. Your future self will thank you.

For about three years now, I’ve had some lower back pain when I work out. Although I tried many times to do physical therapy exercises to fix it, they never stuck.

This week, I sat down and tried to find the reason why… and I think I did. 

I realized that by starting small, I could build the habit without committing to something difficult and time-consuming. Once I created the habit, then I could build off it.

When starting my physical therapy routine, I had lots of motivation and wanted to go balls to the wall right away. However, this caused me to burn out within a week of starting. 

Now, I plan on doing a simple 5-minute routine three days a week. This way, I will get used to making and following a schedule while only putting in 15 minutes of work each week.   

After doing this for a couple of weeks, I will make the routine longer and more strenuous. 

So, my habit-building advice is this:

Start small and slowly build up.

The final thought I had this week was about my phone usage. I checked my screen time for the first time in a while and was amazed at the numbers I saw. 

I caught myself picking up my phone and asking myself, “Why did I just do that?”

Most of the time, there isn’t a reason. It’s a bad habit that has been reinforced for many years and is hard to break.

In the coming weeks, I hope to slowly decrease my screen time by picking up my phone only when I have a specific need for it. 

And to do that, I will ask myself, “Why am I doing this?” every time I get the urge to grab it. 

After using my phone for this specific need, I will set it down rather than mindlessly scroll like I catch myself doing often. 

Another thing I’ve been experimenting with the last couple of weeks is deleting apps during work time. I delete my social media apps during the day and only redownload them after I completed certain tasks. 

This way, it’s harder for me to get distracted so I can focus on the things that matter.

Try this out and see if it works for you. 

To close us out, here's the meme of the week:

I hope you enjoyed this week’s post as much as I enjoyed writing it. Get out there and get stuff done. 

See you next Monday,

Trevor