indecision Archives — NIMBLE FOUNDATION BLOG

How to beat procrastination?

If you want to remove procrastination you must contemplate on the following three aspects of procrastination.

Reasons of procrastination so far as you are concerned.
Decision to remove procrastination from your life.
How to overcome procrastination at all times.

First of all let us talk about the reasons for procrastination. There could be following one or more reasons. These are laziness, indecision and health issues. It is necessary to find out which of these reasons are present in your personality and affecting your work.

If there are health issues, you must consult your doctor. In cases where there are some problems and you feel fatigue most of the time, you can be sure that there are some health problems which need to be resolved. This may time take some time and proper effort and follow-up, but it is necessary that you should undergo the process. There is no shortcut available.

If laziness is the issue you must understand that it is your habit which you have to change. Nobody else will do it for you. Habits die hard and you should be prepared to consistently work to eradicate the bad habit which you may have formed over a period of time.

If however indecision is the problem, you may have to struggle in order to become a decisive person. Here again you will have to dig deep to find out what are the reasons of your ‘indecision’. Mostly this could be related to fear of rejection or fear of failure. In either case the fear tends to become deep-rooted. While one finds it easier to escape this fear by not taking any action, in fact inaction leads to further indecision. Lower self esteem goes down and you find yourself as a poor performer. This is a serious handicap which unfortunately affects 90% of the people, today.

In any case all the above reasons have to be properly identified. These have to be properly addressed. Then only you can go to the next step which is consciously deciding to do away with this bane of life.

How do we do that?

Again, you have to do some research from your own life. You have also to document the problems that you have been facing; losses that this useless habit, procrastination, is causing continuously. It is better to write down all such situations and the damage procrastination has caused in your life in the past. Do it is for as long a period as you can go. Go through the history of the sufferings and of the all losses that you would have suffered. If it is possible you try to convert all the losses into money. Find out the total money lost due to your habit of procrastination. This will open your eyes. It will then be easier to realize that your progress has been suffering because of this bad habit which has been lingering on in your life.

The exercise will surely motivate you to stop procrastination. But don’t ever think that you will be rid of this malady easily. Therefore be prepared to work hard to achieve this feat. The good thing is that consistent efforts in this direction will surely produce results. If you have gone through this exercise honestly and diligently, you will surely decide to ward of this wasteful and costly habit. You will do whatever it takes to achieve this.

Start following your mind, taking actions whatever your inner self suggests. At the same time you have to keep on measuring the result. I have talked to you about two of the three aspects which I mentioned in the beginning and which we must study. Having talked about reasons for procrastination and taking a decision to remove it, eradicate it, we come to the most important aspect of the project. That is how to overcome the procrastination.

I have two critical suggestions which are known to bring forth excellent results. The first one is to start writing a journal. At the end of each day sit down for a few minutes and write down all that happened during the day. Focus on your procrastination. Note down where are you could have acted better. You should also note down if you had postponed anything which needed to be done. For that you should further describe the possible losses which postponing can cause in the coming time. The process of documenting these problems will surely play a very potent role in your enhancing efforts to overcome the serious problem, the one, which has been creating misery in your life.

The second suggestion that I want to give in this regard is: start reading stories of great achievers. You will find that most of them have achieved what they did because they never suffered from procrastination. In some cases the stories may or may not document how they overcame this serious roadblock if at all they had. Therefore do read. In either case you will be motivated to ward off procrastination in life. Even your basic logic will tell you that it is not worth suffering because of a habit which has never helped anyone. Their life stories will inspire you to follow their examples and do your duties diligently. When you are engaged in performance of your duty, you will find that there is no opportunity to procrastinate.

These are not by any means comprehensive solutions. These are just proven suggestions. You may find some other ways which could be helpful in addition to these. Do everything in your control to fight this enemy of your progress procrastination.

Thanks for reading.

Remedy Four Causes of Indecision

About 500 years ago Shakespeare wrote the tragic play- ‘Hamlet’. His tragedy emanates from major personality flaw- indecision. Indeed, the drama exaggerates the flaw and the hero suffers a disaster. This malady is, however, more wide spread in the current scenario. The acute competition & the rat race of the present times have made fear of rejection more prominent than ever before. The gin of fear is causing tremendous stress to most people. Four steps are listed below that will help mitigating the fear which is main cause of indecision.

Always remember that ‘left to themselves things go from bad to worse’. This you must have experienced in life. So the very memory will wake you up from the slumber and you will try to find a solution to the pending problem. Surely, you will need to take decision about the action you need to take- sooner than later. Get yourself motivated to ward off the indecision, thus.
Whenever their some important project, you may write down the problem in detail. Now, think about the possible solutions. Then note down the pros and cons in respect of each. This will help you to decide easier and faster. But never fear about wrong decisions. Some decisions go wrong for everyone. The more you start taking decisions, you will find that incidence of wrong decisions will reduce.
Your indecision could also be because of lack of adequate knowledge about the subject. Instead of worrying about what will happen if decision goes wrong, work hard to gain the required knowledge about the subject. The moment you know the subject well, you will find, it’s easier to decide. Fortunately, we have Google and other sites which instantaneously provide sufficient information on any subject.
And if you are a habitual procrastinator, you must at once say to yourself that your habit has let you down on earlier accessions. You have suffered earlier. Therefore, you would not like to repeat your past mistakes. Procrastination is a disease. It needs to be eradicated from life. Whatever is necessary; you must do to cure the deadly disease.

There could be some more causes which each of us should identify fo himself/herself and then work on these. But indecision should not be allowed to hinder your progress.
Thanks for reading.

Enemies of Happiness

In my last posting I had mention that as a 1^st step we must identify enemies of our Happiness. These are broadly speaking of two types.

Enemies of happiness residing within ourselves.
Enemies outside. These could be people; this could be a tasks which you don’t like or environment.

In today’s posting I like to tell you about enemies of Happiness which are within are our own selves. I have listed eight. There could be more. Based on these 8 you can prepare your own list. Because Happiness is of prime importance to all of us, we must apply our mind deeply to correct the situation. Following is the list of enemies of Happiness residing in our own Body and Soul.

Anger 5. Attachment
Fear 6. Hesitation
Jealousy 7. Procrastination
Indecision 8. Greed

Today I will talk about 1^st four i.e. Anger, Fear, Jealousy and Indecision.

My personal experience and those of my students who have shared with me reaffirm that these four enemies are big Happiness Spoilers in our lives. In order to have appropriate benefit of our discussion, I suggest that you may mentally go through the pages of the book of your life. Then identify which were the moments when these four villains have spoiled your happy moments.
I received a mail from one of my readers to shorten my blog. I ‘ll talk to you further on this tomorrow.
Thanks for reading.

Lessons of Life from Shakespeare.

Any great literary writer is invariably a great teacher. Writer will not sermonize. Life of the current time (normally) is beautifully portrayed. Yet, one could draw great inferences and learn very useful lessons that help humans to live life better. I don’t claim to have read much of Shakespeare, but I am one of his great admirers.
Works of Shakespeare transcend the limits of time and space. He is as relevant today as he was in his time. He is as relevant in India as in England. I have picked up 4 of his tragedies. According to me these are eye openers for common people like us. The four plays I have chosen to talk about are: Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Lear.
When we read these plays thoughtfully and contemplate, we are able to identify short comings of similar nature in our personalities. We may be quite surprised. How and why these did not receive our attention. We would like to remove these faults even though they may be in very small measure. The classified blemishes I am talking about are:
1. Suspicion, Jealousy (Othello)

2. Greed that led to extinction (Macbeth)

3. Credulity Prone to flattery (Lear)

4. Indecision that reaches tragic proportions (Hamlet)

As I said above reading these plays, we observe that all these weaknesses were foolishly repetitive in the tragic characters. We might find that similarly we too harbor some habits that make us do something which we don’t want, repetitively. It is here that we learn a lesson. One can purge one’s personality if so desire. Undoubtedly, the exercise will require a mentor or a guide.
Thanks for reading.

William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare was born in April 1564. Some people say he was born on 22^nd April others opine 23^rd April 1564. He died at the age of 52 years on 23^rd April 1660 that means almost 400 years ago.

How is it that his popularity as a dramatist has not faded out? The reason is his philosophy, the wisdom that we find in his plays and the energizing wit and humor of his comedy. In fact, these transcend the limits of time and space. He has dealt with human emotions – anger, ambition, jealousy, credulity, indecision etc: these habits are found in the people even today.
In this post I propose to discuss his wisdom as is evident from the 3 pieces I have picked from 3 different plays.

HAMLET

Hamlet was a victim of indecision. Indecision was the bane of his life. Unfortunately today also we find many of us suffer from indecision. In the process we undergoavoidable mental agony. I give below the oft quoted words of Hamlet.
To be, or not to be: that is the question: whether’ it’s nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?
In sharp contrast are the following words taken from his play As You Like It.

As You Like It.

And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
These words, I find, are even more relevant today than were in his own time. ‘Exempt from Public Haunt’- we are in dire need of getting a break and going to the nature from our daily hectic life. And the best place is back to the nature. We have lots of resorts by the sea side, on the scenic mountains, and similar places where we are away from ‘Public Haunt’. As Shakespeare says we can speak to the trees enjoy running brooks/trees and find all the goodness of the world in nature.
Finally I have picked up a very significant point from the tragedy- Macbeth. :

Macbeth

When our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors.
The philosophy of this word is as true today as at any time. Often we do not want to act as Williams yet due to our fears we are motivated to indulge. In many other plays to I find Shakespeare’s massage to imbibe courage in ones personality, speaks louder than words.
Thank you for reading.