The advice of UK’s leading procrastination expert Nicole Bachmann is to lower the bar if you are suffering from procrastination. According to Nicole, the problem a lot of people have when procrastinating is not that their goals are to low but too high! In short, the bar is so high that they are doomed to failure – so why even begin?
Suppose you are procrastinating about making cold calls or following up on networking meetings. It is better to have a small amount of consistent activity than no activity at all. By lowering the bar and starting with a very small amount of activity it is easier to get into a routine. Even if you make just one call a day it is more than doing nothing. More importantly it just gets you into a habit.
When you feel comfortable with your level of activity then you can slowly lift the bar. For example, If you started on 5 calls a day then edge it up to six….then seven….then eight. Before you know it you will be making more calls a day than you ever believed possible, just by lowering the bar and raising it slowly.
It’s a little like doing press-ups. If you start out trying to do 50 a day without any previous exercise then you are setting yourself up for failure. Instead, do a little more each day and pretty soon you are doing 100 a day without even breaking sweat!