How to Use Your Senses to Overcome Procrastination in 5 Minutes

Many times in life, you will find that you are just not motivated enough to take on a task that you need to take even though you don’t have a strong enough reason why you shouldn’t. I’d like to share with you a few tips that I use now and again to get me off the couch and take action swiftly. These are techniques that I have borrowed from the NLP and hypnosis world.

USE YOUR SENSES – They are readily available to you!
This is by far the method that produces far reaching results in an instant. It basically involves the inclusion of your common physiological senses to bring you to the manifestation of the task you want to accomplish immediately. The underlying principle here is really the fact that your senses exists mostly in the present, in the now! Therefore if cheated a little, you can capture their full potential to bring you to the future now! This is sometimes called Future Pacing.

How does one achieve this?
Simply begin with the end in your mind and use your senses to verbally describe that end, that future YOU that is an achiever!

Let’s take an example of a task and see how to use the senses to get it done. Let’s say that it is Sunday and you have a Monday morning deadline with a project e.g. updating your teaching blog and you have been putting off this task for a while. Find a quite and comfortable place and dedicate the next 5 minutes to yourself, bringing your focus on your senses. Here are the senses that we will bring into play:

• Sense of Sight/Vision


• Sense of Smell


• Sense of Touch


• Sense of Sound


• Sense of Taste/feeling/perception

Below is a summary of sample questions you can ask yourself and associated feelings. I do this most of the time. I simply get up to my feet with a start and then using a calm but firm voice I ask:

Stephen, when this task is done, what will you hear? What will you see? Who will be mentioning your name, what music will be playing? Stephen, are those cheers of colleagues happy that you have accomplished your task? Stephen, who is standing next to you now that you have completed this task? How do you feel Stephen now that you are an achiever, having completed this task? Do you feel the sense of accomplishment washing your whole body and projecting you to your higher self? Do you feel that sense of wonder; is this all there was to it? See yourself beyond this task, after this task. Step into that future self and feel the difference. See and feel easy now that you have created history by doing what you needed to do. It is done!

You can model even better questions to ask yourself using your senses to define objects while you visualize your future self. Simply replace my name STEPHEN, with yours. And you can do this in front of your computer, inside your car, in the bathroom, or wherever you are that allows you to speak to yourself without seeking social proof!

Thoughts to add on these…
Sometimes to get the burst of energy to put your limbs in motion doing what you need to do, you need to realize the interconnectedness of the universe. For example, it may not be clear how a task such as updating your blog is connected to the happiness of your family. I call this the pain and pleasure connector. Simply imagine the pain or grief of not taking action when you need to and tie it to how it will affect your loved ones. Ask yourself, how will your little gal feel when you don’t take the action you should take now? Will you look at her eyes and say ‘sorry darling, we don’t have milk today because dad is still procrastinating?’ Does that bother you? Do you feel the discomfort of this association? You can use this technique any time and in a matter of minutes you will be in motion, taking action. Simply focus for 5 minutes on the grief that your not taking action will bring to the people or person that you love dearly. The same technique can be used in the reverse i.e. imagine the joy that will come to the person or people that you love so much when you stop procrastinating and take action. Imagine the glow in the eyes of your sweetheart when you stand before her/him and say, ‘baby, it’s all done!’

Realize that in life you don’t have to do anything!

No one forces you to wake up and go to the job you don’t love! No one forces you to sit on your backside and watch TV all day even though you are behind your dreams and your bills! And these are just a few examples. From now on, chose an empowering point of view and say to yourself, “I chose to” instead of “I have to”. See, the minute it’s clear to your subconscious mind that you are in the driving seat, that you are the final authority over all the choices in your life, you mind goes to work automatically to bring you closer and closer to realizing your goals; it brings your physiology in a state of easy flow of action. Nothing in the universe can take the place of action.

Action is the garage of results! Nothing can take the place of action. No amount of words can replace taking action. Procrastination is the secret fertilizer of failure. And the secret is kept away from the man who calls himself a failure!

DON’T FORGET THAT!