 If you have ever worked in anything, you would know by now that one of the most potent enemies of progress is procrastination. You cannot achieve much with that type of mindset. According to solving procrastination, people often procrastinate because they are afraid of failing at the tasks that they need to complete. This fear of failure can promote procrastination in various ways, such as by causing people to avoid finishing a task or by causing them to avoid getting started on a task in the first place. The trouble is that the fear is part of the process of progress. If you are not afraid, it means what you are trying to accomplish is not challenging enough, but what you do next is what counts. People have had ideas for centuries and died with them because they didn't dare to fail. What is the worst thing that can happen? In today's video, I am going to share with you 10 ways to stop procrastinating. 1. Plan This seems like a no-brainer, but it makes everything simple. But then, the most advanced things in life are usually simple. The challenge is that we are often aspiring towards the complexities of life that we forget to embrace simplicity. Planning how your week will go is a great way to start. What do you want from life? What are your long-term goals? You need to ask yourself these questions. The answer to these questions will inform you on how best to lead your daily life. Include little details like what you would do for fun and whether or not you will have fun daily. Differentiate fun from taking breaks. You need to eat, rest and take works when necessary. Whatever you do, keep moving. 2. Follow the plan After you have planned, what next? Plans generally don't execute themselves. Even AI requires programming. They don't just wake up and start executing. Everything that moves in life is moved. Nothing ever just happens. No one gets a medal by doing absolutely nothing. Just those people who keep moving don't stay stagnant in their areas of interest. What are your plans? Do you ever remember them? It is easy to get lost in the crowd, but you need to wake up and push for your dreams. No one understands your dreams better than you. No one should work harder on it than you. What are you waiting for? A job? A miracle? You are all you need. You need to approach life with hunger. A strong hunger for things that no one but you can give yourself. Do you wake up each morning with poppers? Or do you just tumble into the day and shuffle around? Do you remember why you were doing the things that you were doing or you were busy playing video games and hoping your body would tide you over in the next rant? What are your financial goals? When was the last time you saved? The more you think about your plans, the more the likelihood that you will execute. It is best to print them out or write them boldly and keep somewhere you can see all the time. The journey may be challenging, but remembering where you are going and why will keep you moving. 3. Celebrate small wins In the course of your journey, if you meet victories no matter how small, celebrate it. It validates your efforts and will encourage you to do more. If you have 20 articles and you have written one, smile. One means one less to write. You can create a list and write them out. For each task you finish, you can tick it. When you come back to look at the task list, you would have ticked off 10 of them. This will encourage you that if you just keep working, you can tick off all of them. Celebrating does not have to be elaborate. You could treat yourself to a work or a good movie and then back to work. The goal is to associate your mind with the completion of task and pleasure. Once you successfully do that, you will work better on task because you know that you will have fun after each task. Starting is hard though. You need a greet to success. How badly do you want to be successful? Mediocrity does not require much effort. If you just try without making the extra effort, you will survive. But then, what quality of life will you have? If you successfully meet your $1 million financial goal, you can travel to celebrate your win. You could go to Malibu, Hawaii or the Bahamas. You can reflect on how much you have put into getting there and how you can maybe help others get there too. Don't worry, if you are yet to get a big win, if you landed your first client in your business, celebrate it. Do your job well and focus on ensuring your clients get value for their money. When you do this, they will recommend you and all the clients will come. This cycle will continue until you become a big business hiring a lot of hands and paying salaries to staff and all. 4. Set milestones If you want to be a millionaire, what are you currently doing about it and when do you hope this will happen? If you say a month, unless your rich uncle died and leaves you an inheritance or the government mistakenly transfers you the money, this is highly unlikely to happen. It is important to break down progress into milestones. Forgetting a million dollars, you could have a milestone of $10,000 a month. If you can pull this off, then you can replicate your model every month until you can figure out how to make more. Thinking too far too soon will simply make you feel overwhelmed and discouraged. Then you will slip back into the procrastination mode. You cannot achieve your goals with that type of attitude. If you have a consultant business, your milestone can be to close your first 10 clients and charge a minimum of $100 an hour within your first year of operation. When you are able to do this, the higher your hope, when you have met these milestones, you can then figure out how to meet all the key milestones in your business or career journey. A corporate executive may aspire to become vice president or CEO of the company they work in. Their milestones would include going to senior associate manager, senior manager, partner, vice president and then chairman. 5. Break everything into small steps. This is key. The bigger and unattainable a thing looks, the less likely you are to want to pursue it. But when it is a series of small steps, it will appear less intimidating. The goals don't change just your perception of it. According to Lifehack, part of the reason why we procrastinate is because subconsciously we find the work too overwhelming for us. Break it down into little parts then focus on one part at a time. Imagine you had a novel to write, a novel of 60,000 words and trying to wrap your head around the volume may discourage you from even starting. But when you break it down into chapters, if you write 3,000 to 5,000 words for one chapter, it might end up much easier than you anticipated. This is, after all, the go right to finish. The same principle applies to every other work you have been doing. 6. Change your environment frequently. If you find it difficult to write for example in your room, go to your study. Some people perform far better when they are in the open than when they are inside. This applies especially to writers who operate mostly on inspiration. Seating on your bed may inspire you to sleep or goof around on the internet with your phone. Once you realize that you are not as productive in your room, change your position for work. Permanently, it will help you streamline and maximize your working hours even when you work in a corporate environment. If you think better in the cafeteria, take a break, think and return to your station. 7. Hang out with friends who spoil you to action. This is extremely important. People who encourage and motivate you are the best kind of people to keep around you. People who are lazy and unmotivated are the worst kind of people to keep around you. They are likely to make you feel like you are doing too much instead of encouraging you to do more. The company you keep matters a lot. Spend more time with yourself if necessary. Ask yourself critical questions about who you want to be and how much you are willing to give to accomplish it. 8. Get accountability partners. They can be your buddies or work colleagues. What is important is that they help you achieve your goals. Most people are serious about their goals. Join a community where people put out their goals and give regular updates on them and allow people to comment and encourage them. Instead of goofing around on the internet doing nothing, why not use social media to improve the execution of your goals? You must surround yourself with people who ask you whether you have done what you set out to do. They serve as reminders that will ultimately spoil you to action. 9. Find a mentor. Mentors are hard to find but not because they are no successful people in your field. It is mostly because successful people don't have time to waste on people who are not serious and until you are serious enough, a successful person will likely ignore you. Imagine asking someone to call you at night so you can study and they call for a week and you don't peak. What do you think will happen? Don't take people who try to help you for granted. It is difficult to find people who genuinely want to help simply because you need help. 10. Just do it. Finally, the ultimate key to success isn't by waving a magic wand, forged by melon or anything of the sorts. It is simply by doing it. No outlet becomes good by not undertaking the sport. No writer becomes good by not writing. You can only ever be good at anything by merely doing it.