#24 Procrastination and The Hero List (9/15/2022)

I’ve always had a problem with procrastination.

I was the kid who would be up the whole night into the morning working on a project that I had months to prepare for. Sometimes I would even have to skip a class beforehand just to finish up something I should have started a long time ago instead of just the night before.

I tried just about everything, but nothing really stuck and worked well for me.

I tried breaking up big projects into smaller chunks, but that alone did not do anything for me because I kept falling into the trap of “Oh I can skip today, and I’ll just do double the work tomorrow.”

I’ve tried focusing on the easier or more fun parts of a project first just so I could build momentum, and hopefully use that to continue. But that didn’t quite work either. I found myself easily distracted, and sometimes I would use that momentum to do other things that I wanted to do instead of what I should be doing.

I’ve tried many other tips and tricks, but none of them alone were working for me.

If you have seen Tim Urban’s TED Talk about the mind of a master procrastinator, you know that procrastination gets even worse when there is no deadline.

This is why I use The Hero List Method.

The Hero List is a total of 5 tasks that you can do in a day that set you up for a better tomorrow.

The Hero List allows me to write down the things I could (and would) potentially procrastinate on and gives me a focus to do those things above all other possible distractions. I do them because I know that if I can do just these 5 tasks on the list, I will be successful that day no matter what.

With these 5 actions, I will WIN the day.

-Nick Leehy