Do you ever struggle to get started on a simple task? I do all the time! So if your answer is “yes” to this question, it must mean you’re human!
Recently I was working with a high school student who was struggling to get started with a homework assignment. I discovered that he simply needed to use his imagination better in order to take action. Check out the video to see what I mean.
Hey there! Don’t have time to watch the whole video? No worries, I’ve got your back. Here’s a summary:
As humans, we all tend to procrastinate. I’d even go so far as to say that if you say you don’t procrastinate, you might not be human. 😉 Still, when we’re struck with a case of procrastination we often are unable to motivate ourselves to take action on whatever it is we need to be doing next. That was the case for a student of mine. He had an assignment he needed to do and kept putting it off, week after week. After the second week, I realized he didn’t fully understand the assignment and what he needed to do to finish it. So I asked him to put his imagination to use to help solve this problem by:
I asked him to imagine himself doing the assignment. I told him he didn’t have to start it right now, but I wanted him to imagine it, and if couldn’t imagine it, look up and make sure he understood the task. So he looked it up, and then imagined what he needed to do to get it going; whether it was creating an outline or starting to do some research or just making a step by step plan.
And I don’t just use this with my clients. I use it all the time. In fact, just before this video, I was laying on my couch, and I was having a really hard time motivating myself. So I imagined the next task I had to do, and I imagined myself doing it and figured out what the steps were I needed to take. And it worked, I was able to get myself organized in my mind and motivated enough to get up and get going.