3 tips to use right now!
All of us procrastinate at some point. However, most of the time we don’t think about the reasons why we do it. I invite you to take a hard look at the reasons why you postpone some tasks. They may contain the key to stop procrastinating.
Think about the last time you delayed some important task to the very last moment. Why did you do it? What did you do instead?
To stop procrastinating you have to understand why you are not taking action.
Here are some possibilities:
- You dislike the task and don’t really want to do it, so you start looking for some other, more pleasurable things, to do. It could be binge watching your favorite series or something routinary like going through your email.
- The task is very difficult and you don’t even know where to begin. You are afraid of failing.
- You think that you have plenty time, so you don’t feel compelled to do it right now.
These are 3 things that you can do right now:
Take immediate action and work on your task for 15 minutes. Just do it!
- If the task is something you dislike, think about the rewards you will get when you accomplished it. How will you feel when it is done? Then, set a timer for 15 minutes and start working on the task. Often you realize that it is not as bad as you initially thought. In its book “Solving the Procrastination Puzzle”, Timothy A. Pychyl suggests that when a task makes us feel awful, we postpone it to run away from the negative feelings. He proposes to stay put and use emotional intelligence to move forward, saying to yourself, for example, “IF I feel negative emotions when I face the task at hand, THEN I will stay put and not stop, put off the task, or run away”.
Break the task into smaller steps to stop procrastinating.
- If the problem is that you don’t know where to start, break the task into smaller pieces. Prepare a plan with all the steps that you need to complete and block the time in your calendar for each of them. In that way, you don’t need to be making any decisions of what to do and when to do it. It is all in your calendar. When the reminder comes up, you do the activity, no questions, no decisions! This avoids decision fatigue, as I explained in this previous article.
Set your own dealines.
- Some people need to feel the pressure of a deadline. I have a friend who is extreme in this behavior. She will wait literally to the last moment. I have been with her in a car heading to a conference, and she would be putting her presentation together as we approach the venue. The problem is that if you do this on a regular basis you take the risk of not completing the activity on time. The solution here is to set your own deadlines. As suggested in the previous point, break the activity in smaller chunks, and then set a deadline for each of them. Make the commitment to follow the plan to the letter and celebrate the completion of each step.
Once you know the reason why you are putting of an activity, it will be easier to stop procrastinating!
Would you like to learn more about how to be effective and stop procrastinating?
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