You must change the focus of your consciousness, work efficiently, and improve your earning power to be successful.

Colleague Xiao Wang enters the office on time every morning, and habitually pours a cup of coffee, looks at his phone, and then shares the funny videos he sees. By the time I actually start working, it's almost time to get off work, and sometimes I even have to work overtime when I go back at night.

Procrastination wastes time on work that can be done tomorrow, which not only results in low efficiency, but also makes it difficult to guarantee the quality of work. It can even squeeze one's rest time and reduce the happiness index of life. Xiao Wang’s situation is not an isolated case. Many people in the workplace have this problem. So, is procrastination really hopeless? Of course not!

In the book "You are not confused, but you have weak self-control", Phil Tu pointed out that all the problems that give you headaches are due to self-control. Without self-control, you will not be competitive. The reason why Xiao Wang habitually procrastinates is mainly because he has no sense of goal, weak self-control, and no restraint on his own behavior.

Let me first give you two concepts to popularize science. What is procrastination? It refers to a bad behavior that fails in self-regulation and postpones planned things to a time when it can no longer be postponed when the consequences can be expected to be harmful. So what is self-control? It refers to people's ability to consciously control their emotions and behaviors. Simply put, it means that they can manage themselves.

So how can ordinary working people get rid of procrastination and enhance personal self-control?

Feltou pointed out in the book that "One of the main characteristics of procrastination patients is that they have insufficient self-control and thus lose self-discipline." My colleague Xiao Wang is a typical procrastination patient and always feels that There is still too much time, and a lot of time is wasted, resulting in very low work efficiency.

If he could realize that his procrastination was due to poor self-control, consciously seek changes, and spend the wasted time on improving work skills, the results might be completely different. Many people are in the same situation as Xiao Wang. They obviously have various procrastination symptoms, but they do not think that they have poor self-control.

On the contrary, they always attribute the inability to complete things smoothly to various external factors: insufficient time, insufficient education, high difficulty of work... In fact, they want to defeat interference and get rid of procrastination and laziness. The first thing you need to do is admit that you have poor self-control. Otherwise, no matter how much effort you put into cultivating self-control, it will be a waste of time.

How to change the focus of your consciousness? Let me give you an example. Toshiko is learning official document writing. At the beginning, she completed several high-quality assignments according to the course requirements. But after a while, she encountered a blind spot in knowledge that she could not break through and began to doubt herself. For Toshiko, knowledge blind spots are objective difficulties.

If she keeps thinking in this direction, she will definitely not be able to complete all the courses in the end. Fortunately, she changed the focus of her consciousness: Since she couldn't break through, she might as well ask the teacher for advice and discuss it with her classmates. Finally, with the help of teachers and classmates, she found a solution to break through her blind spots in knowledge and successfully completed all courses.

Many times, no matter how well prepared we are, we will always encounter various difficulties when things happen. Because difficulties exist objectively, we cannot change them, but we can change ourselves and let our self-control overcome difficulties. What do we need to do in this process? The answer is to change the focus of awareness.

Filtu shared many tips in the book to overcome procrastination and improve self-control. After summarizing, I will share with you four simple, practical and easy-to-operate methods.

The leader arranged a new job with a deadline of 5 days. You delayed it until the 5th day and finally completed it. If there is an "accident" in the middle and the time is shortened to 3 days, you may be able to complete it in 3 days. Have you noticed that the efficiency of many work tasks is delayed because of "undue deadlines". Therefore, if you want to overcome procrastination, you must first shorten the deadline and cultivate your sense of urgency in doing things. People with stronger self-control have a greater sense of urgency and work more efficiently.

Fiertu points out in the book that "the most important thing in saying goodbye to procrastination is to start taking action immediately." As a professional, if you want to improve your work efficiency, you must first clarify your work content. Before leaving get off work the day before, we can spend 5 minutes taking notes and summarizing the day's work, and make a plan for the next day's work.

And post the schedule in a conspicuous place in front of your desk so that you can see it when you go to work to remind yourself to act immediately.

There is nothing wrong with doing some preparation before going to work, but if it does not take up work time, work efficiency will be greatly improved. For example, my colleague Xiao Wang can arrive at work five minutes early every day, make himself a cup of coffee, and browse the news on his phone. After other colleagues have arrived at work one after another, you can officially start your day's work and gradually eliminate the impact of other interfering factors on you. It will be difficult at the beginning. You can write a note to remind yourself and do it step by step to gradually overcome procrastination.

In the process of overcoming procrastination, if you are not disturbed by external factors and everything you planned is completed as soon as possible, you might as well give yourself some interesting rewards. For example, browse the website, watch a movie, or reward yourself with the food you want to eat. Of course, if you are delayed due to interference from external factors, there must also be punishment, such as not drinking coffee for a week, etc. As long as you persist in executing it, you will surely gain unexpected results.

Everyone desires an efficient way of working, but people always fail to use their time in the right place, resulting in procrastination. As Robert Allen, co-author of "One Minute Millionaire" said: "Everything you want to do well is just outside your comfort zone." So we need to change and constantly strive to achieve our goals. Improve self-control.

The workplace is like a world where you either stand out or are out. If there is no goal to surpass, you will become confused. Only by learning to change the focus of consciousness and improving self-control can you create your own high efficiency. Although change can be scary at first, once you overcome the fear and make the change a reality, you will gradually get used to it and discover its value!