10 Tips For Blasting Procrastination
20 Comments October 10, 2008 / Posted in Personal Development, Productivity
Procrastination is a bad habit of people. It is in us since young and it is up to us to acknowledge that it is an unwanted habit and keep it at bay. How many times we cursed that we never fulfilled our dreams due to procrastination. We can be happier, smarter, healthier and even more wealthy if we could fulfill our daily goals and push away the need to read every email which includes spam, sales letters or humorous emails that you temporarily think that it is more important at that moment instead of doing things of more important value. Everyone is guilty of procrastination and there are ways to tackle the problem and be more productive. Here are 10 ways of blasting procrastination.
1. Affirmation: Do it everyday and consistently. Keep telling yourself, “I like to do things NOW.” Whenever you are thinking of pushing tasks away, tell yourself you like to do things now.
2.Daily Goals: Set a to do list and have a check box beside every item that you would like to do today. Avoid adding unnecessary things into the list to avoid the list to turn out as a 5000 words essay. Check off the items after you completed it.
3.Visualization: The world greatest athlete uses visualization to optimize their performance. We should use this tool to motivate ourselves and help to increase our productivity too. Visualize how you would feel and see after completing the task. See the image in your mind and make it as vibrant as possible. Examples like having a healthy and well toned body after you completed the exercise or having your book published and selling in the bookstores after you completed writing a book.
4.Set a Deadline: How many times have we procrastinate due to not having a deadline. We could drag and drag till nothing was accomplished. Setting a deadline will incorporate a sense of urgency for getting things done.
5.Countdown: After setting a dead line, counting down would helps to create a sense of urgency too.
6:Baby Steps: Break huge task into bite size nuggets. For example when you are writing an essay of 5000 words, you could instead write a paragraph or 2 instead of trying to complete the whole thing.
7.Peak Period: What is your peak period? When is the time you are the most productive? Take note of the time and allocate tasks that add the most value for you into that slot will help you to be more productive. You tend to do things when you are in your more productive time of the day.
8.Conducive environment: MSN messaging, facebook and countless of other applications and stuff that would distract you from doing your work. Either switch off the application (assuming you got the determination not to turn it back on), off the internet or get to a place where there is no Wi-Fi access to do your work.
9.Do Not Disturb!: Set a time where you are not suppose to be interrupted and do heavy task that you need to concentrate on it. Vice versa, set a time where interruptibility are allowed and do a lighter task in that period.
10.Committing time: Commit time to do a certain task. Do a task for a set amount of time before moving off your seat.
The most important thing is to just start doing something. Energy gathers when you start to do something and momentum will help you to follow through.
Leave a comment whether the above points help you in combating procrastination.
“Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried”
Anonymous
Cheers,
Vincent
Personal Development Blogger
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Ill finish this later
Hey Vincent, first of all, I love the picture of the sleeping cow! hahaa.. what a perfect interpretation of procrastination.
Procrastination is always the silence killer, and i hope more people can overcome this and achieve what they really deserve in life!
this is really good and helpfull but i have a Question to 7. how do i find my peak period? I can’t really feel a different between when i work in the night or in the day.
also i would like to add a quotation to number 1. ‘hvis det er nødvendigt kan jeg ligesågodt elske at gøre det’ which means ‘If it’s necessary, I might as well love doing it’
Hi Laura
You can find your peak period by being more aware of yourself. Sometimes in life we would live our life subconsciously and failed to be aware of things happening around us. For example when we drive a car to and from work everyday for a year, sometimes we can be not thinking about it and our body is actually doing using our subconscious mind. Just be aware of what you are doing and how you are feeling at that time. Ask yourself questions like, are you feeling lethargic at that specific time and is your mind drifting away from work and you are reading your mails and surfing the net when you are really suppose to do serious work. Hope that helps!
Cheers
Vincent
Haha eric, that is a good example of procrastination.
Cheers!
Vincent
Hi Albert. Thanks for the comment. I definitely agree that procrastination is a silent killer. It is always creeping behind us and ready to pounce on us whenever we give him the chance. Hope more people can read on the above article and provide more tips on blasting away procrastination.Cheers!
Vincent
Some good suggestions here.
Not all procrastination (or productivity, for that matter) is created equal, though.
It can sometimes be good to procrastinate – it can lead to less struggle, delay (counter-intuitive, but true), and more optimal functioning.
There’s a new book out titled Productive Procrastination, and it describes how to do it, how to tell productive from destructive procrastination, and how to end the destruction kind. (Yes, it’s available on Amazon.com.) Learn more about the concept of Procrastivity at http://www.Procrastivity.com. Wishing you all optimal procrastivity!
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Hey Vincent,
I found this firefox add-on that lets you periodically keep track of the amount of hours you’re procrastinating.
You can get it at : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5168
Cheers,
Long
@Hi Long,
That will be an interesting tool. I got to take a look at it. Thanks for sharing.
Cheers
Vincent
Personal Development Blogger
I liked your article. A lot of good tidbits of information to follow. I was told once that if you can just get started and say you will work at your subject for 10-15 min, you will tend to finish it even if it takes 30 min. It’s just a matter of getting it started. I made myself a list of things I wanted to complete (in no specific amount of time), but I wanted to work on 3 things a day. I chose those 3 things for each day and allotted 20 min to each. As a general rule I would finish each task just because if I got it started, I would generally finish it. Great advise, great site. Thanks.
Tracey
[...] and negative aspects, I can motivate myself to take action immediately. I had wrote an article 10 Tips For Blasting Procrastination | Health Money Success Hope this helps. Cheers Vincent Personal Development [...]
Yes its important to learn how to crack down and not procrastinate. Its always in our intentions to study for an hour each day, or write a little each day… work a little each day. Yet we end up putting everything off, saying I will just do a little extra tomorrow. Until we end up having the whole thing to do in a small amount of time. Then we get stressed and everything seems unbearable. Its important to learn from our procrastination mistakes as well, so we can strive to be more focused next time. I like to have a planed checklist to do each day, this helps with procrastination as well!
Till then,
Jean
Hi Jean
A checklist or a to do list help us to keep track of the tasks we need to do everyday. It helps me to keep procrastination at bay too because I find that it is compulsory for me to complete my task on the list.
Cheers,
Vincent
The amount of things we put off and the amount of time we waste! Time to get my act together!
Thanks mate
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