How To Defeat Procrastination part 3

 Effective Ways to Defeat Procrastination

This is the final post in this series on procrastination. I plan on addressing this subject more later in the year and possibly get a little bit more specific on more ways to eliminate procrastination from your life, but until then, here are some ideas to work on.

1. Recognize the problem, identify the cause and take appropriate action to defeat it

One of the most important things that you should do to defeat procrastination and be more productive in work and life is to recognize the problem and understand what causes it.

More often than not, we face the problem with procrastination when we are not using our time wisely and spend time working on unimportant tasks instead finishing high priority tasks. Putting off high priority tasks that should take center stage, is an easy distraction that shuts down our productivity. Even jumping of social media can keep you from doing things that need to be done.

Here are some things that will help you identify if you are procrastinating.

· You are procrastinating when you are working with low priority tasks instead of high priority tasks that need to be done.

· You are procrastinating when you are skipping around on your to-do list to do all of the low priority tasks as opposed to following a logical order.

· You are procrastinating when you spend hours on social media and it isn't marketing related..

· You are procrastinating when you are starting to work on a high priority task and then suddenly switch gears by taking multiple breaks.

· You are procrastinating when you leave a task unfinished in your to do list for a long period of time, even though you are fully aware that it is very important that you finish it on time.

· You are procrastinating when you are waiting for the "right time" or the right mood to deal with an important task that you are working on.

· You are procrastinating when you are making an excuse not to do what you are supposed to do.

Once you notice that you’re procrastinating, take an appropriate approach to overcome it. One of the best ways to do this is by prioritizing the tasks according to their importance.

Make a schedule of what needs to be done. Create a checklist or to-do list of all your tasks during the day and arrange them according to how important they are. Try to set priorities in all of your daily tasks. You need to prioritize all of your tasks by putting the most important tasks on top and the less important tasks at the bottom so you will be in the right direction and can cross them off as you go down the list.

Set tasks by category such as high priority tasks for important ones and low priority tasks for unimportant ones. Complete those tasks that are in your top priorities first and when done then you can move on to those tasks that are in your low priority. Do one task at a time. There is no such thing as multitasking.  If you get the chance, go back and read some of my past blog posts on time management.

Act now and just do it

When you already have a to do list or a checklist for your daily tasks, start working on the task by focusing on starting it instead of finishing it. Although you may get depressed because of the difficulty of the task and get pressured because of the deadline, do not allow that feeling to control you. If you do so, this will only create fear as well as resistance towards your task that will affect your performance and in turn this will have a negative impact on how you will do your work.

Rather than stressing yourself out or depressing yourself over the difficulty of the task, just focus your attention and effort in starting the task. No matter how hard it is, just do it. Having a to-do list and starting one task at a time are the best ways to defeat procrastination.

Divide the project into smaller tasks

The size of a task is more than enough to frustrate and depress people, which in turn can lead them to have a lack of interest or desire to work on it to completion. However, instead of dwelling on how big the task is, make an effort to break the project into smaller manageable tasks. In this way, you will be able to easily build an action plan to deal with the task more effectively.

More often than not, people procrastinate on big tasks because they do not know what to do next when they start working on it. This keeps them from continuing the work and finishing it. So, to prevent this, take some time to evaluate the task. Break it down into smaller tasks.

Once you have a plan, start working on smaller tasks that are easier and faster to finish. Doing so will greatly help you to have a sense of achievement and motivation each time you accomplish a specific task. And this leads you to work further on the task.

I also use this technique with goal setting and it works well.

Beat your fear and love what you do

Having a lack of desire for something will greatly prevent you from working at your best. This will lead you to procrastinate. In order for you to work effectively and productively, you should love what you do. See the tasks not as a problem you need to solve, but rather as achievement you need to work on.

Don’t be afraid that you will make mistakes in completing the task at hand. Accept the fact that you will make mistakes once in a while and eliminate any fear that you feel. This will help you to be more productive. 

To overcome procrastination, the first and most important thing that you should do now is to decide whether you want a better life for yourself or let it be this way – allowing procrastination to take over your life and affecting everything you do. If you want to get rid of procrastination in your life and experience a better life from this day forward, act now. Procrastination can't thrive if we act now and on the things that matter.

This will surely help you to overcome procrastination.

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How To Defeat Procrastination part 2

Underlying Causes Of Procrastination

Going back to the definition of procrastination that I gave in the previous post, "putting off things needing to be done in a specific period of time or avoiding things resulting to delayed accomplishments of tasks"... Now the question is what leads

procrastinators to avoid doing something they are supposed to do? The answer boils down to two things that I touched on in the last post and that is fear and desire.

Fear and desire are the 2 main factors involved in both action and inaction. Desire can be best explained as the source of motivation to move forward. Without desire, people do not have the driving force to take action. On the other hand, fear is like the darkness that prevents you from moving forward.

More often than not, if fear is more dominant than desire, procrastination occurs. But if desire is more dominant than fear, action happens.

If people suffer from fear and along with it they lack desire in doing something, the end result is that procrastination is going to happen and, time after time, will eventually take over their life – affecting everything they do throughout the day.

Lack of desire

One of the most powerful factors that cause procrastination is lack of desire. More often than not, procrastination happens to people because they lack desire in what they do. People are more likely to procrastinate if they don't love what they are doing or they are less interested in doing that particular action over something else.

One of the biggest things that I dislike is calling and emailing people, especially when it is to discuss money, so I, in the past, would wait until the last minute to do it. This led to me getting paid later than I wanted, which led to me not having enough funds to pay suppliers, etc. I didn't do this, or not do this as the case may be, out of fear, but I didn't like it, so I ended up filling my time with other things that I enjoyed doing more, such as writing blog posts.

Fear

Another factor that causes procrastination is fear. Even though you have the desire to do what you are supposed to do, if fear is stronger than that desire, it is more likely that you will procrastinate. This can be any fear. It may be a fear that has something to do with uncertainty, pain, hardship, failure, rejection, disappointment or any other similar thing or it could be due to a deep seeded phobia such as not cleaning the attic out of fear there might be spiders.

Perfectionist use procrastination as a resulting behavior because they fear doing something that will be less than perfect than what they envisioned. This, in turn, affects how they will perform in order to complete the task. Nevertheless, this leads them to procrastinate.

No matter how much you procrastinate, be aware that procrastination could turn into a big problem sooner or later and before you even realize it, it is already affecting your life negatively, whether it is your procrastination or someone else's.

So, with this, here are some main reasons why you should act immediately and defeat procrastination all at once.

Reasons Why Procrastination Must be Stopped

If you will not act now to stop procrastinating, it will lead to suffering a number of big problems not only in your work, but more importantly, in your life.

· Procrastination can lead to low quality of life.

· Procrastination can lead to trouble at work.

· Procrastination can lead to less productivity at home, work and life in general.

· Procrastination can lead to frustration and depression due to the things that you didn’t accomplished.

· Procrastination can lead to failure, especially when it comes to achieving your personal goals.

· Procrastination can lead to missed opportunities in work and in life. <---big one

· Procrastination can lead to serious disappointment once you failed to satisfy your own expectations and others’ expectations as well.

There are more, but these are the things that you are likely to experience when you don't get rid of this anchor in your life.

Although this may seem depressing, don't worry because it's absolutely possible for you to change old habits. As long as you will start now, you can stop it from affecting and controlling your life, you can overcome it.

The first thing that needs to happen is to declare that you are not going to let procrastination control you and this sets us up for the next post. See you then, and until next time, here's to your success.

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How To Defeat Procrastination part 1

 

I know that I have covered this in previous posts, but procrastination is one of the biggest problems that keep us from moving forward in business and in life.

Procrastination is a typical problem that a lot of people experience. In fact, this is one of the lead reasons that I never accomplished anything of value for years. Procrastination through fear, through laziness, though boredom; the reasons for procrastination is vast and we all have our excuses for why we procrastinate.

Learning how to defeat procrastination as well as laziness can serve as a big help for you to increase your effectiveness and improve your productivity in both work and life.

Procrastination is a psychological behavior that is associated with those individuals who develop and acquire a bad habit of delaying tasks. More often than not, we’ve been through a point where we have experienced delaying things needing to be done on time. Everyone had been affected by the habit known as procrastination up to some extent.

However, for some, this undesirable problem has become a part of their daily life, which turns out to be their source of continuous anxiety and stress and this has greatly affected their performance and progress in work and life.

As a result, they miss a lot of opportunities, wasted a lot of work hours, experienced resentment, stress and guilt for not finishing what they are supposed to do. Sad, but true this can happen to anyone once they allow procrastination to take over their life, instead of the other way around.

The truth is most procrastinators know what they need to do. However, for certain reasons, they keep repeating this bad habit which prevents them from finishing the job that they need to do. Before, you can know how to defeat procrastination, it is very important that you know the characteristics and common causes of this problem.

Understand them as they are imperative in overcoming procrastination.

Characteristics Of A Procrastinator

More often than not, procrastinators possess a positive view of their ability to finish the work on time. This line of thinking results in a detrimental delusion in time management and creates unexpected delay in their task until there is no time left to finish the work at hand. In turn, this act is followed by a burst of anxious, last minute efforts to complete the work that often gets accompanied by an innate excuse to justify their action, blaming it on “lack of time” or, should it meet a deadline and work, you might hear “I like to work under pressure."

The common characteristics that procrastinators have are:

· Unorganized

· Stubborn behavior

· Manipulatory

· Low self esteem and self confidence

· Inability to cope with pressure

· Fear of failure

· Fear of change

· Fear to face the unknown

· Stressed, tired and overworked

· Perfectionism - A very common one used by entrepreneurs

· Indecisiveness

· A feeling of being too busy all of the time

 

Even though this problem might not seem to be that serious, this can cause disturbing effects to the life of an individual. Procrastinators often experience the feeling of helplessness and weakness together with the frustration of not having the ability to control their life. Or, on the adverse, they take on a cocky attitude, nothing is ever their fault, others can just deal with it, it's part of their personality, so get over it, etc.

I was one that fell into the procrastination excuse of "paralysis through analysis" and very seldom pulled the trigger on anything out of fear I would not do it right. Then, if it was something that needed to be done, then I would rush through it at the last minute and it would become a self fulfilling prophecy because I would end up messing up or not completely something properly.

In the next few posts, I hope to show you that procrastination isn't just a personality trait and can be changed.

I usually end with "here's to your success" but I think now I will say, "work on your success" especially if you are having issues in the area of procrastination.

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