The One Way To Kill Procrastination

Ah, procrastination. Thirty years ago it’s a word you rarely heard but nowadays it’s bandied about by almost everyone, mainly because almost everyone deals with it on a daily basis. But how you deal with it will determine your level of success.

• It’s knowing you have important things to do but wasting time doing other things instead.
• It’s feeling overwhelmed by how much needs to be done and so never even starting.
• It’s feeling bad because you know you should be doing projects with a higher priority but somehow you just can’t get yourself to do them. All of a sudden checking emails, Facebook or shopping online seems a much more attractive option.

Procrastination can make us depressed and miserable and at the very least cause our productivity to plummet. The burden of having so much to do but being unable to do it can weigh heavily on us.

Most cases of procrastination can be traced back to a single chore that’s creating a bottle-neck and holding up everything else. It’s that one job we hate to do but we know we have to. So why not just do it, right? Not as simple as it sounds.

For me it’s a certain exercise in my workout session. I hate it. It’s hard work and motivating myself to do it is even harder. But, it only takes 5 minutes, it really works so it’s well worth the effort, and once I get it done the rest of the workout just flows smoothly and before I know it I’ve finished. And I’m proud of myself.

Sounds simple? It is simple, but it’s not easy when your brain keeps throwing roadblocks at you. A bit of personal accountability is required.

I’ve noticed that procrastinating on this one little thing can hold up my entire day. So I’ve learned to get it done early and get it out of the way. No matter how much I don’t feel like doing it I know that if I can get that one 5 minute exercise out of the way the rest of my day is more productive and I feel much better.

And, you know, once you start it becomes easier. It’s the starting that’s hard. Just tell yourself you’ll do it for 5 minutes. Chances are when the 5 minutes is up you’ll continue because you want to get it finished and you’ve realised it isn’t nearly as bad as you thought.

Even if you don’t finish the whole job until later in the day, just getting the hardest part out of the way sets you up to accomplish a whole lot more. Coming back to it later in the day is easier when you’ve done the hard part.

When you’ve finished congratulate yourself and get started on another task on your list. You’ll find that when you do the hardest jobs first the rest of your day will flow and you’ll surprise yourself at how much you get done.

It is the only way to beat procrastination and get productive. But keep in mind we can’t be productive 100% of the time. It’s ok to do nothing sometimes and, as strange as it sounds, doing nothing some of the time can make you more productive the rest of the time.

So remember, pick the hardest thing on your to-do list and do that first. The rest will become so much easier. You just have to start.

KEEP THE FAITH