Think It, Do It: A Mantra For Getting Things Done

Two years ago I sought professional help in order to overcome my chronic personal procrastination.  I worked with a life coach who helped me develop strategies for setting personals goals and achieving them.

Until that point, I had excelled at procrastination – I took the opportunity to avoid taking action better than anyone I knew.  My personal development, health, finances, relationships and direction had definitely suffered.

I was a world beater procrastinator.  From the relatively menial to the significant I had items that had languished on my to do list for more than 15 years !!

A rudimentary analysis of my procrastination identified a few root causes:

FEAR and LAZINESS.

One of the recommended techniques for getting focused was to incorporate mantras into my thinking.  I developed a simple mantra that has served me very well:

THINK IT – DO IT

This action oriented mantra is all about immediacy – the antithesis of procrastination.

The mistake that procrastinators make is to delay and obsfucate when it comes to taking action.  The first delay is significant; every subsequent delay and avoidance has less and less significance.  It becomes easier to procrastinate once you’ve open the door of procrastination.

‘I’ve already put this off, it won’t matter if I put it off for a bit longer’.

Procrastination breeds procrastination.

The ‘DO IT’ part of the mantra part doesn’t necesarily mean that you should stop what you’re doing to take action on the latest thought or remembered task. That would be far too intrusive – you’d never get anything done.

‘DO IT’ can be as simple as adding an item to your to do list or taking a small step that puts the task in motion.

But often ‘DO IT’ can mean exactly that – this works brilliantly with small menial tasks that you don’t really want to do.  You can significantly reduce the amount of time that you spend thinking, putting off and actioning this task by doing it there and then.

THINK IT – DO IT

These four words have served me well.  In the past two years, I have managed to get my act together in many different aspects of my life, crossed off some significant personal objectives and made great progress towards some of the specific personal goals that I set myself in the very first meeting with the life coach two years ago.

What’s your mantra for getting things done?  Do you need one?