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Procrastination is one of
the biggest enemies we have to our Personal Productivity.
Thinking about doing something and planning to do it are fine,
but what if we fail to move ahead?
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Procrastinating the unimportant items in our day is a useful
talent. The problem for many, however, is that we are
procrastinating the important and crucial items in our day,
reducing our personal productivity and increasing our stress
levels.
Here are five pointers to help you to better overcome
procrastination. (You can implement them now or perhaps
tomorrow…or better yet, next week.)
1.
Daily planning the night before. “People
don’t plan to fail but they sometimes fail to plan”. Without
a plan of action in place before you arrive for work it is real
easy to get caught up in “stuff”. The phone rings, someone
drops by and you direct your time responding to the loudest
voices demanding your attention rather than to the most
important priorities on your plate. A plan of action, prepared
the night before is like a roadmap for the next day. You know
what your next step ought to be to get you into productive
action and away from procrastination.
2.
Work with a clean desk. “Out
of sight, out of mind.” The reverse of that is just as true.
When it’s in sight, it’s in mind and most of us cannot help
but be distracted and our time is then directed to the less
important and easier tasks causing us to put off the more
important tasks. Working with a clean desk or clean work
environment permits us to have only the most important task
before us so that we can focus all of our attention on that task
without other visual distractions.
3.
Reduce large projects to bite-sized pieces. How
do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Tomorrow you plan to
work on a three-hour project. The problem is, many of us do not
get three hours to work on any one item. We have to contend with
interruptions, meetings, etc. (I don’t know that I even have
an attention span that lasts for three hours!) And we often wind
up procrastinating working on this task because “there’s not
enough time to get this done”. So, instead of scheduling the
entire three-hour project for tomorrow, schedule a small bite, a
step or two that might take 20 or 30 minutes. Then put the next
step on the next day’s To Do list and the next step after that
on that next day’s list, etc. It may take several days, but
you will get that elephant eaten up, one bite at a time.
4.
Plan around interruptions.
Interruptions tend to occur in identifiable patterns. I get most
of my interruptions early in the day versus later in the day. I
get most of my interruptions early in the week versus later in
the week. So, if I plan a big project first thing Monday
morning, I’m creating stress because as soon as I begin,
interruptions arrive and re-focus my attention causing me to
procrastinate what I really wanted to do. It is so much easier
swimming downstream with the current rather than bucking the
tide. Therefore, I plan those larger projects for later in the
day and later in the week when I tend to get fewer
interruptions.
5.
Assign deadlines.
Have you ever failed to achieve a New Year’s resolution? If
so, that probably happened because you did not set a deadline.
Deadlines move us to action. Without a deadline, things wind up
in our “as soon as possible” pile, a “Never Never Land”
where items will get attended to “someday”, “when I get
the time”. Create a deadline and you will be moved to action.
About the
Author:
Don Wetmore is a
full-time Professional Speaker, specializing in the topic of
Time Management. He has prepared an additional article entitled,
“Top Five Best Time Management Practices”. It’s
free. Visit his site at http://www.balancetime.com.
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