How To Break The Procrastination-Paralysis Loop Right Now

The thing about “getting your shit together” is that you think it’s going to be a one-time event: I do not have my shit together. → I will learn the secret of getting my shit together. → I will then have my shit together henceforth and forevermore.

Unfortunately, that’s…not how it works. At least in my experience.

There are times when I feel like I have everything figured out: I’m doing my weekly reviews, planning my time and energy around my priorities, and getting my to-do list done by 5pm every day. I feel unstoppable!

And there are times when everything feels like it’s falling apart. My to-do list is overwhelming, so, naturally, I ignore it. Instead of doing deep work on my most important task first thing in the morning, I procrastinate with something random, I sometimes end a full-time workday without having accomplished anything of significance and yet somehow still feel exhausted.

The thing is,

Telling someone who already feels overwhelmed and paralyzed how to create a system for organizing their lives is like giving a drowning person the blueprint for building a boat. Not super helpful.

The systems, advice, and tools that you need when you’re at the helm of the ship headed for the horizon aren’t necessarily the ones you need when you’ve fallen overboard and are barely keeping your head above water. At that point, you don’t need a map, a compass, or a better ship — you need a lifesaver.

Enter the advice of David Parker from his book The More You Do, The Better You Feel. 

On the advice of a friend, he started keeping a feelings journal. Over time, he began noticing a connection between the tasks he was putting off and his feelings of depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem.

Unsurprisingly, the worse he felt, the more he procrastinated. But the relationship actually felt stronger in reverse: The more he procrastinated the worse he felt. Armed with that insight, he devised a method for trading his procrastinating habit with a doing habit.

He called his system the Just One Thing or J.O.T. Method.

INTRODUCING: The Just One Thing Method

Here’s how it works: 

1 | Take a pen or pencil and turn to a blank page of a notebook.

2 | Write today’s date in the upper left-hand corner.

3 | Think of one simple task that you’ve been putting off. Write it down underneath the date.

4 | Do that task and only that task. Don’t write out a to-do list. It’s easy to let yourself get distracted by all of the other undone tasks you aren’t doing. Just do the one thing you wrote down.

5 | Once it’s done, draw a thin line through the task so that you can still read it, but you know it’s complete.

Repeat steps 3-5.

At the end of the day, you’ll end up with a list of marked as done to-dos.

The goal of J.O.T. isn’t to get more stuff done. Or even to get more of the “right” stuff done. Instead, the aim is to break the procrastination-paralysis loop right now by proving to yourself that you are, in fact, capable of following through and taking action. As the title of the book states, the more you do, the better you’ll feel. And the better you feel, the more you’ll feel capable of taking on.

At some point, you may even find yourself safe and dry back on deck, in the right headspace to set goals, organize and prioritize your to-do’s, conduct weekly reviews, plan out your days the night before, get things done, time block, and all the other productivity best practices out there.

If (when) you start to feel yourself slipping, don’t panic. Simply come back to focus on Just One Thing.

Remember that no matter how overwhelmed and paralyzed you feel, you’re always one small action away from being back on the right track.

Psst – did you find this helpful, inspirational, motivational?

Share a screenshot of this on your IG Stories to let me know! (If you tag me @tailsblog + @tails_ph, I might repost & shout it out to you!)

And also because you never know who’s being inspired by your journey and what you share on socials.

Someone shared this with me, and it changed my life → now I’m sharing this with you, so you can change your life → who are you gonna share it with, to make a positive impact?

See you around!!

Tails ♡