Procrastination - A Step-By-Step Guide to Stop Procrastinating
If you have so many things to do that
you often find yourself struggling to finish projects and tasks and move on to
other stuff, you’re certainly not alone. Studies show that over 20 percent of
the adult population put off or avoid doing certain tasks by allowing
themselves to be overtaken by distractions.
What about the rest of the population? What
do they do to prevent procrastination?
In this article, I am going to explain to you
why procrastination is so difficult to beat and how you can stop procrastinating
once and for all by following a step-by-step guide. But first, you need to
understand how procrastination happens.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. What is
procrastination
2. Why stopping
procrastination is difficult
3. A step-by-step
guide to stop procrastinating
1. Identify your
triggers: the 5 types of procrastinator
2. Face your
triggers and get rid of them
3. Take planned
breaks
4. Reward
yourself
5. Keep track of
your time in a smart way
What is procrastination
Piers Steel, the author of the book The
Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting
Stuff Done, defines procrastination in this way:
“Procrastination is to voluntarily delay an intended
course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay.”
In other words, procrastination is doing more pleasurable things in place of less
pleasurable ones. The end result is that important tasks are put off to
a later time.
Why stopping procrastination is difficult
Human beings have limited self-control. Dr. Roy
Baumeister, a psychologist from Florida State University, has been studying
self-control and he has found that just like any muscles, human’s self-control
is a limited resource that can quickly become exhausted. When
self-control is close to being depleted, human tend to choose what’s more
pleasurable– the immediate procrastinated tasks instead of the actual works.
At its core, procrastination is an avoidance strategy. Procrastinators choose
to do something else instead of doing what they need to do because it’s much
easier to choose pleasure over pain.
In short, procrastination is so difficult to
beat because it is a battle
against human’s natural enemy, a human weakness that is in-born.
A step-by-step guide to stop procrastinating
Despite the fact that it’s human nature to seek for
immediate rewards and procrastinate, here I have a step-by-step guide for you
to follow so as to stop procrastinating.
1. Identify your triggers: the 5 types of procrastinator
Identifying the type of procrastination you
personally experience is an essential step for you to fix the problem at its
root.
Which type of procrastinator are you? Let’s
take a look at the triggers for your procrastination type:
Perfectionist
Being perfect is the pleasure perfectionists
want. But often this leads to them being too scared to show any imperfections.
Because of this, they frequently fail to complete things, as they’re forever seeking the perfect timing or
approach. Tasks end up never being completed, because in the eyes of the
perfectionist, things are never perfect enough.
Instead of finishing something,
perfectionists get caught up in a never-ending cycle of additions, edits, and
deletions.
Ostrich
An ostrich prefers to stay in the dreaming stage. That way, they don’t have
to work for real, or deal with any negativity or stress.
Dreaming gives this type of people a false
sense of achievement, as in their minds, they envision big, ambitious plans.
Unfortunately for them, these plans will most likely stay as dreams, and
they’ll never accomplish anything truly worthwhile.
Self-saboteur
A self-saboteur has bought into the line that ‘by doing nothing, bad things won’t
happen.’
In reality, self-saboteurs have developed a
fear of making mistakes or doing anything wrong. Their way to avoid these
mishaps, is to do nothing at all. In the end, they may make few mistakes – but
they also see few accomplishments.
Daredevil
Daredevils are those who believe that deadlines can push them to do
better. Instead of having a schedule to complete their work – they
prefer to enjoy time doing their own thing before the deadline comes around.
It’s most likely an unconscious thing, but
daredevils evidently believe that starting early will sacrifice their time for
pleasure. This is reinforced in their minds and feelings, by the many times
they manage to get away with burning the midnight oil. Often they sacrifice the
quality of their work because of rushing it.
Chicken
Chicken lack the ability to prioritize their
work. They do what they feel like they should do, rather than
thinking through what they really need to do.
Prioritizing tasks is a step that takes extra
time, so chicken will feel it’s not worth it. Because of this, they usually end
up doing a lot of effortless tasks that don’t contribute much to a project.
They’re incessantly busy on low-impact tasks, but seem oblivious to urgent,
high-impact tasks.
2. Face your triggers and get rid of them
Whether it’s fear of failure, overwhelming
feelings, avoidance or convincing yourself you’re just too busy to get
something done, you can improve your ability to be productive by eliminating
your procrastination triggers.
For Perfectionist, re-clarify your goals.
Much of the time procrastination tendencies
form simply because we’ve outgrown our goals. We’re ever-changing and so are
our wants in life. Try looking over your goals and ask yourself if they’re
still what you want.
Take time out to regroup and ask yourself
what you really want to achieve:
- What steps do you need to take?
- Is what you’re currently doing
reflecting what you want?
- What do you need to change?
Write things down, scribble them out and
rewrite.
For Ostrich, do the difficult tasks first.
Even if you feel you’re not a morning person,
the beginning of the day is when your brain is most productive. Use this window
of time to get the more difficult stuff done.
If you leave your difficult tasks to later,
you’re much more likely to put it off because you’re tired and lack motivation.
Finishing lots of simple tasks at the
beginning of the day such as reading all the new emails only gives you a false sense of
being productive.
For Self-saboteur, write out a to-do (and a not–to-do)
list each day.
Writing things down is powerful and
psychologically increases your need to get things done.
Each day, make a habit of creating a list of
the tasks you know you’ll try and avoid. By doing this, it
brings these ‘difficult’ tasks to your mind’s attention instead of keeping them
locked away somewhere in your avoidance mode.
Remember, think how satisfying and productive
it feels to cross of a completed task.
For Daredevil, create a timeline with deadlines.
It’s common to have a deadline for a goal
which seems like a good idea. But this is basically an open invitation for procrastination.
If it’s a self-created deadline with no
pressure, we tend to justify pushing it back each time it comes into sight and
feel we haven’t yet done ‘enough’ to get there.
Create a bigger timeline then within that,
establish deadlines along the way. The beauty of this comes when each deadline
completion is dependent on the next. It keeps you on track and keeps you
accountable for being in alignment with the overall timeline.
For Chicken, break tasks into bite-sized pieces.
A lot of the time procrastination comes from
overwhelming thoughts.
If something feels too big to tackle and we
don’t know where to start, it feels like a struggle. This is also true if our
goal is too vague and lacking direction.
Break down larger tasks into smaller ones and
turn them into daily or weekly goals. Smaller steps may seem like the slower
approach to achieving a goal, but it often leads you much more quickly to where
you want to be due to the powerful momentum you get going.
3. Take planned breaks
Human brain isn’t designed to work
continuously on the same task and this could be a reason for procrastination.
Make sure you take regular, structured breaks
away from your task so that you can come back refreshed and ready to be more
productive.
A break as short as 5 minutes is enough to
keep your mind sharp and wards off fatigue. I recommend you to use the Pomodoro Time
Tracker. It is a great tool to help you take breaks at set
intervals. Simply start the 25-minute timer, and follow the prompts.
4. Reward yourself
It’s important to acknowledge and reward
yourself for achieving even the small tasks. It creates a sense of motivation
and releases those feel-good, productive emotions that spur you on to achieve
even more.
Make your reward proportional to the task you
completed so getting a bite-sized task done gets you a cup of your favourite
coffee or snack. Then plan a weekend away or fun activity for the bigger stuff.
Personally I try to make staying focus more
fun by using the app Forest. It turns productivity into a game. In the game, you can
plant a virtual tree at the beginning of your work time. If you maintain focus
for the duration of the timer, you’ll grow a tree to add to your forest. It’s
rewarding when you can eventually grow a forest.
5. Keep track of your time in a smart way
If you want to prevent the bad habit of
procrastination from coming back, keep track of the time you spend every day.
By having a clear idea of where you spend
your time, you can always review your productivity and know which areas to
improve.
It’s not easy to keep track of every minute
you spend throughout the day so I recommend you to use the app Rescue Time.
It gets you a categorized breakdown of how
you spend your time and helps you to find out how much time you’re really
on-task. You can even label activities as productive and non-productive so as
to block your biggest distractions.
Procrastination exists for many reasons and
only you know for yourselve what these triggers are. Understanding the source
of your avoidance tendencies is important in moving them out of the
way and help you start the productivity momentum.
Leon
Ho
http://www.lifehack.org/669901/how-to-stop-procrastinating?ck_subscriber_id=168781672
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