 Greetings aspirants, welcome to a special snippet brought to you by Shankar A. S. Akalami. In this video essay, we will see about an hurdle that every aspirant has to overcome to effectively clear this examination. The hurdle that I am talking about is procrastination. First I must ask you one thing, do you procrastinate? If yes, you are not alone. Even I will procrastinate sometimes. Okay? See, not just you and me. Even people who are considered at the top of their field will have to deal with the habit of procrastination at one point of their life. Some sources say that the great Italian polymath Leonardo Divenci took 16 long years to complete his masterpiece, Mona Lisa. So if you, me and Mr. Divenci has one thing in common, we all procrastinate. But you no need to worry about that. There are some tips and tricks which you can follow to deal with procrastination. So before seeing the tips and tricks to deal with the habit of procrastination, first let us understand what is procrastination, the reasons why we procrastinate and finally let us see the tips and tricks to overcome procrastination. Okay? First what is procrastination? See procrastination is nothing but your present self robbing the happiness of your future self. Okay? So what you are effectively doing is you are choosing temporary short term happiness over long term happiness. This is what happens during procrastination. Now let us see the reasons why we procrastinate. See the reasons for procrastination can be broadly classified under two hits. First is the biological reason and the second is the psychological reasons. Okay? First let us take the biological reasons for procrastination. See in our brain there is a constant battle between our limbic system and our prefrontal cortex. So what is the limbic system? See the limbic system deals with our emotional and behavioral response. Okay? It deals with our fight or flight response. See the limbic system evolved way earlier than the prefrontal cortex. It is the dominant part of our brain. See consider this scenario, you are walking down the road and the dog starts chasing you. At that moment you do not have time to take complex decision. You have to instantly start running from that situation. See our limbic system has evolved to perfectly deal with that kind of situation. Okay? So in that particular situation what our limbic system will do is it will instantly command our body to start running away. Okay? So basically our limbic system is motivated by instant gratification. This is about the limbic system. Now let us look at the prefrontal cortex. So as I already said the prefrontal cortex evolved little later. So compared to our limbic system the prefrontal cortex is little less dominant. Okay? The prefrontal cortex is the area which deals with complex problem solving and decision making. So this is the part of our brain which differentiates us from the animals. See animals are purely motivated by stimulus but us human beings we are motivated by decisions which is based on rationality. But in the fight between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex it is the limbic system that comes as a successful one because as I already said it evolved earlier and it is the dominant part of our brain. Okay? So this is the biological reason why we procrastinate. See our limbic system focuses on instant gratification and in the fight between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex our limbic system comes out as successful. So we are designed to choose instant gratification over long term big time rewards. So this is the biological reason why we procrastinate. Okay? Now let us see the psychological reasons why we procrastinate. See psychologically there are some triggers that pushes us towards procrastination. Let us see some triggers. See the most common trigger that most of the aspirant phase is the fear and anxiety. See consider this scenario you are given a book. We are asked to read the book just for the sake of reading. See in that scenario we will happily read it but if the same book is given and we are asked to read the book for an examination we get fear and anxiety. In that case we will start procrastinating. See in that particular scenario we are procrastinating not because of laziness or lack of time management. We are procrastinating because of emotional management, lack of emotional management. Okay? So in this case you must first identify this trigger. Only if you identify this trigger you can effectively find solution for this. See for this particular case I have to quote an important thing. I don't remember the quote exactly but the essence of the quote is that only the voice man knows the difference between what is under his control and what is beyond his control. Okay? So in our preparation journey you must first come to a conclusion that what is under your control is the work you put in and what is beyond your control is the result. Only after coming to this realization you can effectively deal with fear and anxiety. Only if you effectively deal with fear and anxiety you can master emotional management. Only if you master emotional management you can effectively deal with the habit of procrastination. So this is about one trigger. The next common trigger is boredom. See everyone will have their favorite subject right? And similarly everyone will have a subject which they resent to the core. See in this I am going to use my personal example. See initially during the start of my preparation I used to resent art and culture and ancient India. See the common reason for resentment is two. One thing is if you don't find the subject interesting you will resent the subject. And the next common reason is if you find the subject very hard you will resent. See in my case in regards to ancient India and art and culture my resentment was not because of I found the subject less interesting but because the fact that when I read the subject I was not able to recollect the facts. So when I was not able to recollect the facts I was harsh on myself. So this created a negative feeling. See when I discussed about the biological reasons for procrastination I mentioned about the limbic system right? So evolutionarily what our limbic system has been designed to do is that it will take all the measures in its hand to avoid negative feelings. So in this scenario what my limbic system did is to avoid the negative feeling it convinced myself to hate the subject. So if I hate the subject I won't read it right? See if I read it and I forget the facts I will hit the negative feeling. So to avoid the negative feeling totally my brain tricked myself to hate the subject. So only after identifying this I was able to deal with it. So what I did was I started practicing self-compassion. I started forgiving myself. See I came to a realization that not everyone will have idiotic memory like Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory. It is natural and it is very human to forget facts. Only after coming to this realization I was able to forgive myself. Only after I was able to forgive myself I started focusing on the solution rather than the problem. See in this case the problem is I was forgetting facts and the solution is I was not able to revise properly. So to address the problem I started revising. See even after revising sometimes I will forget some facts. So in that case also I started practicing self-compassion. So when I start forgetting facts what I did was I started revising when every time I start forgetting facts I will revise instead of being hard on myself and which will lead to negative feeling. So I started revising and I started addressing the problem. So in this case also I understood my trigger only after understanding my trigger I was able to address it. So these are two common triggers that most of the aspirants will face during their preparation. So some other triggers are like lack of motivation, obsession towards perfection and distractions and finally the lie that we keep saying ourselves that we will work well under stress. See not everyone is a mess Dhoni, everyone under stress will perform poorly only. So if you say the lie that you will perform well under stress and push back your deadlines you are just lying to yourself. So these are the common triggers that will push you into procrastinating. So these are the psychological reasons for procrastinating. So until now we saw what is procrastination and the reasons for procrastination. Now let us see how to effectively overcome the habit of procrastination. See while discussing about the psychological reasons for procrastination itself I mentioned three solutions to overcome it. Let me rephrase it again. First is you must do a self-assessment. You must first identify your triggers. Only after identifying your triggers you can easily overcome it. So this is the first thing that you must practice to overcome the habit of procrastination. The second thing is you have to be self-compassionate. You have to forgive yourself. Only if you forgive yourself you will avoid the negative feeling. Only if you avoid the negative feeling you can take the steps to look at the solutions rather than focusing on the problems. And the third thing is practicing emotional management. See only after mastering emotional management you can effectively deal with fear and anxiety. Only if you deal with fear and anxiety better you can overcome the habit of procrastination. See these three things that I mentioned will help you in making a behavioral change to address the habit of procrastination at the root itself. So these are the changes you have to make. See to make these behavioral changes there are some tips and tricks which you can follow. Now let us see the tips and tricks. The first thing you can do is face your fear while you are studying study the subjects which you find most difficult first. See if you do that after completing it all the other parts will become easy. You will become more productive. So come out of your comfort zone and complete the difficult part first. This is the first trick. Now let us look at the second trick which is the 30 minute rule. See the 30 minute rule is very simple while reading work hard work very hard and give your full efforts for 30 minutes. After working hard for 30 minutes have a break for 10 minutes. If you follow this 30 minute rule you can study effectively for a long time. The next is divide your goal into smaller chunks. See if you want to read the entire modern India book break it into smaller chunks. Keep a goal that you will read two chapters of modern India today. See the important advantage of breaking your goals into smaller chunks is that every time you complete a smaller goal you will feel a sense of accomplishment. So every time you complete your goal there will be a positive feedback. So if you get into this positive feedback loop you can effectively overcome procrastination. The fourth trick is work in public. When I say work in public what I mean is that use library or study hall. See what happens when you go to a library or study hall is that you will have a positive pressure on you. See lot of aspirants will be around you in reading right. So it will indirectly put a positive pressure on you. So this positive pressure will help you deal with the habit of procrastination. The final trick is accountability. See while reading form small study groups and be accountable to that study group. See this accountability also puts a positive pressure on you. So if you are not comfortable with forming a study group be accountable to someone who you trust the most, someone who wishes you well and wants to see you succeed. Because someone can be your father or your mother or your close friend. Be truthful to them and be totally accountable to them. This will put a positive pressure on you and it will help you overcome procrastination. So these are the five tricks. First is do the worst thing first. Second is the 30 minute rule. The third is divide your work into smaller chunks. With this work in public and the fifth one is building a accountability body. See these five tips and tricks will help you in dealing with the habit of procrastination. See I want to end this video discussion or the video essay in the past you are a funny note. See I don't know if everybody know about the English series The Office. See actually it is one of my favorite TV shows. In one of the lead characters Michael Scott will ask White shoot what is the best advice he has given him for that Dwight will reply don't be an idiot and Dwight will go on to say this advice help me a lot and he will say that whenever he is faced with something he will ask himself would an idiot do it. If yes he won't do that thing. So this may appear funny or cross to someone but you have to dig deeper. See what actually Michael Scott advice to Dwight shoot here is that he advice him to practice mindfulness. See this entire video essay can be summarized by this word mindfulness. You have to practice mindfulness. See to avoid procrastination also you have to practice mindfulness. So every time you are about to do something just question yourself be mindful of that action and question yourself whether this action will benefit my future self. If answer is yes go ahead with the action. If the answer is no don't do that. So be mindful every time you are about to do something just ask the question whether this action will help my future self. If yes do the action if no don't do that. This will help you in addressing procrastination. That's all for this video essay. If you like this video like comment and share and if you have any query with this video post it in the comment section. I will meet you in a future video. Thank you.