Procrastination :You have a deadline approaching. However, instead of doing your work, you are procrastinating by checking email, social media, watching videos, and browsing forums. You know you should be working, but you don’t want to procrastinate.
We’ve all heard of the procrastination phenomenon. When we procrastinate, we waste our free time and put off important tasks that we should be doing until its too late. And when it is too late, we panic and wish we had started sooner.
Chronic procrastinators I know have spent years trapped in this cycle. Delaying, putting things off, slacking, hiding from work, facing work only when it’s unavoidable, and then repeating the cycle. It’s a bad habit that eats away at us and keeps us from achieving greater success in life.
Don’t allow procrastination to rule your life.
Here, I’ll share some helpful anti-procrastination techniques for how to stop procrastinating.
Table of Contents
Now Let us start travelling into the deep knowledge about anti-Procrastination. Get ready to wear your seat belt and kick on
Re-Clarify Your Goals
Procrastinating for an extended period of time may indicate a misalignment between what you want and what you are currently doing. We frequently outgrow our goals as we learn more about ourselves, but we do not change our goals to reflect this.
Get away from your work (a short vacation is ideal, but a weekend break or staycation will suffice) and take some time to regroup. What exactly do you want to accomplish? What steps should you take to get there? What are the next steps? Is your current work in line with that? What can you do if it doesn’t?
Action Step: Examine your goals to see if they still correspond to your dreams. You can do this by remembering why you started something and asking yourself, “Are the things I’m doing helping me achieve what I want?”
Break Your Work into Little Steps
Part of the reason we procrastinate is that we subconsciously believe the work is too difficult for us. Break it down into small pieces, then concentrate on one at a time. If you still procrastinate after breaking the task down, break it down even more. Soon, your task will be so simple that you will think to yourself, “Oh, this is so simple, I might as well just do it now!”
Action Step: Make a list of what you intend to do as an action step. When you have a plan to follow, everything becomes more manageable. When you have completed each item on your list, you can easily review your work and proceed on to the next.
Change Your Environment
Our productivity varies depending on the environment. Examine your workspace and your surroundings. Do they inspire you to work or do they make you want to cuddle and sleep? If the latter is the case, you should consider changing your workspace.
One thing to keep in mind is that an environment that once inspired us may lose its lustre after a while. If this is the case, it is time to make a change.
To avoid Procrastination and focus on what you’ve decided to focus on, try to eliminate all physical and digital distractions from your work environment. For example, you could put your iPhone on ‘Do Not Disturb,’ then put it in a drawer that requires you to get up to check it. Disable notifications and alerts on all of your devices as well. Basically, unplug before plugging in and focusing.
Action Step: Change or find a better environment to help you focus more on what’s in front of you. Try to eliminate as many distractions as possible, and begin by making improvements in your area.
Eliminate Your Procrastination Pit-Stops
If you Procrastinate a lot, it could be because you make it easy to procrastinate.
Determine which browser bookmarks consume the majority of your time and move them to a separate, less accessible folder. Turn off the automatic notification feature in your email client. Remove all distractions from your environment.
I’m sure some people will get out of the way by deactivating or deleting their Facebook accounts. I think it’s a little drastic and extreme, because dealing with procrastination is more about being conscious of our actions than using self-binding methods, but if that’s what you need, go for it.
Action Step: Make a time to check your emails. Constantly refreshing your inbox and responding to emails slows you down. Track and time yourself as you complete tasks to determine how long it will take you to finish them. When you reach a goal or complete a task, reward yourself with a break.
Finish Your Day Before It Starts
This tip continues where tip #1 left off. Planning your days ahead of time is the best decision you can make to avoid procrastination. Rather than frantically deciding what you’ll do on any given day, a better approach would be to take a few minutes at the end of each day to quickly plan out the next day.
For example, every night before bed, I write down/review my plans for the next day as well as anything else that needs to be done the next day. This way, my most important goals and projects have enough time to be accomplished—rather than procrastinated on.
Action Step: Plan your day the night before using a physical planner or your mobile device. Choose the most important task for tomorrow and schedule time in your planner for it.
Reward Yourself
Some argue that rewards aren’t effective motivators. They are not to be believed. Those people are most likely criminals. OK, maybe not—but they’re only right about external rewards, a.k.a. “bribes”. As it happens, rewarding employees does not always increase motivation.
Offering yourself rewards, on the other hand, is just common sense. You require that Bing! Moment because, after all, you are a giant hairless ape with a penchant for gourmet coffee and a laptop. If you can’t seem to stop procrastinating, try this hack.
The monkeys were placed in a cage with a button that, when pressed, dispensed a piece of food. “Yum!” exclaimed the monkey as he pressed the button. So he pushed it once more. Once more. Monkeys are, after all, just small hairy people who don’t have access to coffee or laptop computers, so they learn quickly.
Then there’s the twist: every third time the monkey presses the button, he gets an electric shock! He then consumed his treat. “Ouch ouch!” he exclaimed as he ate his treat.
The moral of this story is that as long as we get our treat, we’ll put up with a lot. Find a treat worth pressing the button for, even if you know it will hurt like hell.
Get a Grip and Just Do It!
In the end, it all comes down to action. You can strategize, plan, and hypothesise all you want, but if you don’t take action, nothing will happen. I occasionally get readers and clients who continue to complain about their situations but refuse to take action at the end of the day.
Reality check: I’ve never heard of anyone procrastinating their way to success, and I doubt it will change anytime soon. Whatever you’re putting off, if you want to finish it, you need to get a grip on yourself and do it.
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