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    The Science of Getting Started: How to Beat Procrastination, Summon Productivity, and Stop Self-Sabotage
    The Science of Getting Started: How to Beat Procrastination, Summon Productivity, and Stop Self-Sabotage
    The Science of Getting Started: How to Beat Procrastination, Summon Productivity, and Stop Self-Sabotage
    Ebook181 pages3 hours

    The Science of Getting Started: How to Beat Procrastination, Summon Productivity, and Stop Self-Sabotage

    By Patrick King

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    About this ebook

    Outsmart your lazy and undisciplined tendencies. Become a productivity machine and achieve your goals quickly.



    Procrastination is the monster that we are always running from. It lurks around every corner, and can completely sabotage your life. But you can learn to defeat it every time.


    A blueprint for getting into motion from a complete standstill. Understand and defeat your psychological blocks.



    The Science of Getting Started is a deep dive into our tendency to push things until the last minute possible. It uncovers the biological and evolutionary science behind procrastination, and how we can beat these instinctual drives to triumph in our career and personal life. A plethora of studies are analyzed and put into illuminating contexts.
    Best of all, it’s a book of scientific solutions boiled down to everyday usefulness. You’ll be able to apply insight from this book immediately to slay your procrastination monster and get ahead of the pack.


    Get started instantly; now; today. Stop saying “I’ll do it later…”



    Patrick King is an internationally bestselling author and entrepreneur. His writing draws of a variety of sources, from scientific research, academic experience, coaching, and real life experience. He has battled the procrastination monster his entire life and brings proven techniques to you.


    Discover discipline, willpower, and motivation that works for you. Defeat your inner sloth. Channel your inner beast.



    •A scientific and biological overview of your procrastination habit.
    •Warning signs to monitor your work ethic.
    •Psychological tactics to trigger your brain to productivity.
    •How to structure and schedule your life to safeguard against procrastination.
    •Simple yet effective tactics to get off your butt and into action.
    •How to beat analysis paralysis and other causes of mental freezing.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateJun 27, 2019
    ISBN9781099214288
    The Science of Getting Started: How to Beat Procrastination, Summon Productivity, and Stop Self-Sabotage
    Author

    Patrick King

    Patrick King is a social interaction specialist/dating, online dating, image, and communication and social skills coach based in San Francisco, California. His work has been featured on numerous national publications such as Inc.com, and he’s achieved status as a #1 Amazon best-selling dating and relationships author. He writes frequently on dating, love, sex, and relationships. Learn more about Patrick at his website, patrickkingconsulting.com.

    Read more from Patrick King

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    Reviews for The Science of Getting Started

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    • 5/5
      This is an excellent book with lots of strategies to beat procrastination.
    • 2/5
      Save your time and read a longer article about procrastination. Yet another book about procrastination.
    • 5/5
      What a great book. It helped me become aware of what was causing me to procrastinate and has great advice on what to do about it. It is an easy read and has plenty of excellent ideas on what you can do to conquer procrastination and improve time management. I am already seeing a difference in my productivity.
    • 4/5
      This book was an easy read and overall useful. It gives great strategies to beat procrastination. The only knock I have is was the overuse of breaking tasks into smaller tasks to get started strategy. I felt like I read that in almost every chapter and over time became redundant. Overall a good read!

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    Table of Contents

    Introduction

    Chapter 1. Why You’re a Couch Potato

    The Procrastination Cycle

    The Lizard Brain

    Driven by Impulse

    9 Procrastination Scales

    Chapter 2. Your Procrastination Profile

    Procrastination Typologies

    Typology Triggers

    Despite It All…

    Chapter 3: Action Mindsets

    The Physics of Productivity

    Eliminate the Paradox of Choice

    Motivation Follows Action

    Chapter 4: Psychological Tactics

    No One Simply Feels Like it

    Out of Sight, Out of Mind

    Visualize Your Future Self

    The If-Then Technique

    Chapter 5: Strategic Planning

    Think STING

    Manipulate the Procrastination Equation

    Temptation Bundling

    The Eisenhower Matrix

    Chapter 6: Structuring Against Procrastination

    Aim for No More Zero Days

    Employ Self-Interrogation Techniques

    Write Down a Schedule

    Limit Information Consumption

    Chapter 7. Get Off Your Butt

    The 40–70 Rule

    Tiny Steps

    Banish Excuses

    Parkinson’s Law

    The Energy Pyramid

    Summary Guide

    Introduction

    I want to start this book with a story about procrastination, but maybe I’ll tell you tomorrow…

    When my mother was pregnant with me, my father promised to build a shelf in my nursery room to house all the keepsakes and memorabilia I would create as a growing human being: for instance, locks of hair from my first haircut, my baby teeth when they fell out, my first fingernail clippings, the bracelet that was put on me right after I was born, and my first pair of shoes.

    It seems like everything parents keep of their young children is some form of refuse or garbage, but I suppose the sentimental value can’t be discounted. The shelf was also supposed to have space across the top and bottom to act as a photo album, along with a ruler running down one side to track my height.

    Sounds like a pretty good idea, right? Cute, even. At least that’s what my father thought.

    He conceived of this idea when I was barely the size of a peanut, which would place my mother somewhere between two and three months of pregnancy, roughly. The shelf ended up being built after I had already lost my first tooth, which would place me at roughly seven years old.

    His grand shelf had a turnaround time of almost eight years, and it can probably be assumed that he wasn’t off searching the world for the perfect tree to harvest wood from. It is also rather unlikely that he had changed his mind and wanted to wait for me to grow up so we could share the experience of building something together, though it’s an excuse that sounds as good as any.

    He just procrastinated and never quite got around to it. It always remained on his to-do list, but other tasks seemed to take precedence over it or have greater urgency. I later asked him how he allowed this to happen, and he said that it simply seemed like too big of a task and that everything else seemed easier to complete, so he would just perform those tasks first—washing the car, cleaning the gutters, cooking a pie. He might not have enjoyed any of those tasks, but at least they were relatively small and had a definite ending time, and he knew exactly where he could start.

    Naturally, the next question I had was what motivated him to finally set his sights on finishing the shelf. It was completely related to his reason for not starting. Instead of viewing a shelf as an insurmountable task that would take up weeks of his time, he began to view it as something to do little by little. And he took this to the highest degree, buying some nails one weekend, taking some measurements another, and buying one to two pieces of the required lumber each month.

    In other words, he took it slow and broke the overwhelming task into tiny steps that ultimately made it easy to say, Oh, what the heck, I can do this right now. Despite my father’s six years of delay tactics and absentmindedness, this is a story about how to slay the procrastination beast in a way we can all implement in our daily lives. One of the biggest weapons you have against procrastination is its natural enemy: making tasks almost impossible to skip over in the present moment. We’ll cover that in more detail later.

    Perhaps it is hereditary, but procrastination has also plagued me for years in both my personal and professional life. I’m embarrassed to say that I pulled multiple all-nighters in college and never seemed to learn my lesson. Breaking tasks into tiny steps was a big factor in defeating it, but understanding the psychology behind procrastination and why we can’t seem to do what’s best for us is what will get you to where you want to be.

    Humans are many things, but acting in a way that is consistent with our intentions is not something we specialize in. It’s time to dig deep into what happens in our brains when we suddenly want to clean the bathroom to avoid our homework. Getting off your butt to get started is not in itself a complex issue, but that undersells the calculations and negotiations we engage in as human beings.

    Chapter 1. Why You’re a Couch Potato

    Procrastination is opportunity’s assassin.

    - Victor Kiam

    You have met procrastination before. It needs no introduction, especially when you’ve known it all your life. Since the moment you were old enough to recognize that you actually have the option to build a Lego castle rather than sit down to do your math homework, procrastination has been there in the background as the devil on your shoulder, encouraging you to do what is worst for you. It’s like your shadow; you just can’t shake it, it’s always with you, and it’s easy to forget about.

    But unlike your shadow, it’s dead set on ruining your life!

    Now you’re stuck with it and are having problems because it’s starting to control you, like one of those relationships that started out fun and exciting but gradually morphed into something that just caused you unhappiness. You know the ones I’m talking about. So you want to break up with it to get your life back on track, but you don’t know how.

    The answer in finally regaining control from the demoralizing domination of procrastination starts with understanding what you are dealing with and how you continually get tricked into handing over the reins to it over and over again.

    The term procrastination was derived from the Latin pro, meaning forward, forth, or in favor of, and crastinus, meaning of tomorrow. Its literal translation can thus be taken to be the moving forward of something to tomorrow or favoring tomorrow as the ideal time. Action is never for today; it’s always another moment to be dealt with later.

    For our purposes, procrastination is the act or habit of putting off something to a future time. It involves delaying what needs to be done until the last moment, often to the endpoint of not doing it at all. It involves a certain amount of self-sabotage and ignorance of any future consequences. It causes undue stress and anxiety, often at the pursuit of short-term gratification. It is responsible for an untold number of lost opportunities.

    However, it’s a mistake to assume that procrastination occurs simply because there is boredom or discomfort. They are parts of the problem, but in reality, much more goes into our lack of action. Just tackling an alleged lack of motivation and interest in something you need to do only shallowly addresses procrastination.

    For instance, the thought of having to write out a 20,000-word research paper will certainly cause feelings of boredom and discomfort, so you may delay working on the task for as long as you can. A movie sounds more fun, stimulating, and comfortable.

    The next thing you know, you’ve put off writing the paper until it’s just a day before the deadline—which wasn’t exactly a rational move, given the sheer size of work involved. You feel guilt and shame about letting things get that far, but you still didn’t sit at your computer to start typing. You miss your deadline, lose your job, and your cat runs away from home.

    Suppose the 20,000-word research paper was on a topic that you found stimulating and fun and comfortable. Are you so sure that you would wake up eagerly each morning, ready to start typing and editing? It might help, but it’s still an unpleasant activity that you would rather substitute with fun. Also, consider how many things you currently avoid even though they are relatively fun and comfortable. They are too numerous to name. This means there is something deeper going on here that keeps you glued to your couch, physically or figuratively. In fact, there is a cycle that researchers have articulated, and this is the first of the reasons in this chapter that you are a couch potato.

    The Procrastination Cycle

    In some ways, the existence of a cycle is a relief because it means that beating procrastination isn’t so much about reaching deep inside yourself and relying on your guts to get the job done (although sometimes that part cannot be avoided). It’s actually about understanding the cycle of laziness and disrupting it before you get sucked into it.

    It’s the equivalent of understanding how to use a certain physics equation to solve a problem versus trying to solve the problem differently each time and sometimes just trying out 20 different possibilities. When you know what you’re looking for, you’re just going to be far more effective. In practical terms, this means that doing what you need to do will be much less of a struggle in the end.

    There are five main phases of the cycle that explain why you tend to keep sitting on your butt even though you know you shouldn’t be. It further explains how you justify sitting on your butt and even how you’ll probably sit on your butt even more decisively the next time. We can follow along with an example of washing a car. You’ll soon see how simplistic attributing procrastination to boredom or laziness is.

    Unhelpful assumptions or made-up rules: Life is short, so I should enjoy it and not spend my precious time washing that dusty car! Car washes are something you pay for anyway!

    Increasing discomfort: I’d rather not wash the car. It’s boring and uncomfortable. I know my spouse asked me to, but it can wait.

    Excuses for procrastination to decrease psychological discomfort: It’s perfectly reasonable for me not to wash the car. It’s so hot outside I would melt. My spouse didn’t really mean it when they asked.

    Avoidance activities to decrease psychological discomfort: I will clean the bathroom instead. I’m still productive! I’ll also arrange my desk. Lots of things getting done today. I did pretty well today, all things considered.

    Negative and positive consequences: Ah, I feel better about myself now. Cleanliness all around. Oh, wait. I still need to wash that car, and my spouse seems angrier this time…

    Which brings us full circle: the car isn’t washed, and your assumptions remain the same if not reinforced, only this time there’s even more discomfort that you want to avoid immediately. And so it goes on. Once you’re in the cycle, it’s hard to get over the increasing inertia keeping you from getting the task done.

    Let’s take a look at each of the phases individually. We’ll start right from the top; this is where you are either failing to start a task or to complete a task already underway. You know you should do these things, and they are in your best interests. However, you’ve already made the decision against self-discipline, so what goes through your mind?

    Unhelpful Assumptions or Made-Up Rules

    If you feel like you don’t want to start or follow through with something, it’s not due to simple laziness or I don’t feel like it right now. It’s about the beliefs and assumptions that underlie these feelings. What are some of these unhelpful assumptions or made-up rules?

    My life should be about seeking pleasure, having fun, and enjoying myself. Anything that conflicts with that shouldn’t be allowed. We all fall into this at one

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