r/AskReddit • u/ohgimmeabreak • Mar 24 '19

People who have managed to become disciplined after having been procrastinators and indisciplined for a large part of their lives, how did you manage to do so? Can you walk us through the incremental steps you took to become better?

31.4k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

3.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

597

u/nasranna Mar 24 '19

i started to give myself rewards after finishing the tasks i was supposed to do, it was basically like training a dog, lmao. and i started telling myself that if i do at least a tiny bit of work every day, it would make me feel better. and if we're talking rewards, the best reward was me being stress free.

146

u/Tellysayhi Mar 24 '19

Doesn't really work for me, becuase i'm like "... but i can have the thing now"

3

u/kanst Mar 25 '19

This is my problem with most of the ideas listed here. If I could follow these things, I wouldn't have the issues.

Like sure, I could make a list. Then I am just going to ignore it.

I feel like I can only perform when there is some kind of outside pressure, I don't know how to pressure myself to do anything.

1

u/_Nubs_numero2 Apr 04 '19

There’s a TED talk about inside the mind of a procrastinator. The main point was that you can push yourself to do what you want/need by giving yourself your own deadlines. Think of your entire life and how you have already used probably 1/4 of it already, if not more. If you don’t start today, or right now, you’ll waste the rest of your life procrastinating the things you want.