Procrastination is the habit of putting off certain activities and doing more enjoyable ones instead. In other words, procrastination is “leaving for tomorrow what you can do today”.
Every time you fall into this bad habit you increase your execution times and move away from your goals. If you want to improve your productivity, it is essential to pay attention to this behavior and work to avoid it.
The term procrastination is a very common behavior. Even though you procrastinate, you might probably not recognize yourself as a procrastinator. The good news is that, being a learned behavior, it can also be unlearned.
Theo Tilton – Best Selling Author, Coach & Speaker
The main trigger for procrastination is negative feelings. When you feel stressed, indecisive, overwhelmed, or even bored, you’re more likely to engage in this behavior. It is a simple mechanism, based on the natural tendency of people to avoid unpleasant things.
Knowing this, if you want to avoid procrastination, you must control the negative feelings that trigger it. Although you cannot completely eliminate all the negative feelings related to the development of your work, you can control some situations that favor their appearance.
I want to explain 10 strategies that will help you break free from procrastination and improve your productivity. Each one of them will allow you to know the triggers of this behavior, and you can start working today to reduce its impact.
1. Set your goals
When your goals are unrealistic or not well defined, you are more likely to end up procrastinating. Knowing the motive behind your effort will help you overcome temptation.
Motivation is a very powerful force that pushes you to make efforts to get what you want. In this sense, it is the opposite of procrastination, because it encourages you to put off immediate rewards in order to achieve greater long-term rewards.
When defining your objectives, you should try to be as specific as possible. Very general or broad objectives are not motivating. They can even generate some discomfort by perceiving them as too far away or difficult to reach.
Another requirement of the goals is that they must be personal and motivating for you. If you intend to achieve an objective that is not relevant to you, it will be difficult for you to feel motivated to work on it.
2. Organize your day
One of the main triggers of procrastination is having to decide what the next action is. Not knowing what to do creates negative feelings and makes you more likely to procrastinate.
You will have verified that the temptation increases in the moments of change of task. The reason is that starting an activity generates some resistance because it requires extra effort. If the mental effort of planning the next activity is added to this resistance, the chances of procrastinating are multiplied.
To avoid this, you should have your daily activities planned, so you always know what the next task is. It is best to do the planning the day before, to start your day with clear goals.
3. Effectively manage your time
Sometimes the amount of work we have to do becomes overwhelming. Breaking a complex task down into several simpler ones can be a very effective way of coping with the workload. However, even when the task is simple, we continue to postpone the date to finish the earrings, until it is too late. Create a timeline and assign specific times and due dates to each small task. Letting the date to finish a task pass can affect the performance of others previously established, so you will feel the urgency to act to meet your goals. Having your duties and times well organized can improve the quality of your work and avoid stress.
4. Change your perspective
Reflecting on the two previous points can change your perspective about what is truly important to you at this very moment trying to break free from procrastination. Try to think about what you are passionate about doing, and how you can achieve your goals, and focus on it. Perhaps, in the end, you will realize that spending all day watching videos of kittens is not the solution to your problems and that it is time to get to work on the pile of papers on your desk.
5. Divide your work
If you are faced with a job that is too complex and you do not know how to start, it is likely that you will have doubts or feel overwhelmed. It is these types of negative feelings that act as triggers for procrastination.
When you feel unable to tackle something, the temptation arises to postpone that task, to do others that are more pleasant, or that you are sure you can start and finish.
To avoid this, the best strategy is to divide your work into small and easy tasks to tackle. Each part of the job becomes a simple task that, once completed, gives you a sense of accomplishment and increases your motivation.
6. Eliminate distractions
If you want to be more focused on your work, you must eliminate or minimize potential sources of procrastination. There may be more merit in overcoming procrastination in an environment loaded with distractions and alternative sources of entertainment, but it’s an unnecessary effort.
What are these distractions? It depends on each case, but there are some very common ones. Nowadays, the mobile phone is a great temptation, where we have almost everything: social networks, the internet, videos, music, mail, contacts, games, etc.
It is best to keep it quiet and out of sight. If you are one of those who think that you must be constantly connected, I have news for you; it is not necessary at all. To check it, you can ask yourself, of all the notifications you have on your mobile, how many are really urgent?
In addition, there are possibilities to remain available for emergencies, avoiding distractions. Phones allow you to selectively mute notifications. The ideal is to have everything muted, except calls. Nobody receives urgent requests through social networks or email; you can afford to stay a few hours without attending these channels.
If you work on a computer, another source of distraction is internet access. Some tricks to avoid temptation are: (a) Deactivate the Internet connection if it is not essential for your task, (b.) Eliminate direct access to make it difficult to access your favorite pages to procrastinate, and (C.) Not have the passwords for these websites saved by default.
The people around you also generate interruptions and are a source of distraction. While you can’t “mute” people, you can set limits on their interruptions. If you’re focused and you’re interrupted, you can politely say that you’ll attend to that person later. In a preventive way, you can even notify your surroundings of the times of the day when you do not want interruptions.
The trick to making these ideas work is to offer an alternate time to handle requests. It is not enough to say “I can’t right now”, you must indicate when you will be available.
Multitasking is another source of distractions that, in addition to lowering your performance, it facilitates procrastination. By having several open tasks, it is easy for you to opt for the most pleasant one, postponing other more important ones.
7. Reward your effort
Create a system of rewards that help you celebrate achievements and small “punishments” for when you fail at something. Having a reward planned encourages you to work more efficiently and productively. Although, you can choose the reward you want. Celebrating by buying something new or going to the movies every time you succeed in a project or depriving yourself of using your cell phone for a few days when you don’t, is a good strategy to boost your productivity.
Asides from that, another good option is precisely those pleasant activities that you have been avoiding.
The goal is to stop using these activities as justification for not doing your job. When you stop using them as an excuse, you can start using them as a reward for a job well done.
Using rewards like this reinforces your sense of accomplishment. Doing something nice is not the same as doing something nice that you have earned. This satisfaction will make it easier for you to avoid procrastination the next few times.
Also, using them as a reward changes the way you enjoy these activities. If you do them at the right time, the guilt disappears and you stop listening to that voice that says you should be doing other things.
8. Customize your strategies
If you want to reduce the impact of this bad habit and want to break free from procrastination, it is important that you observe your own behavior. Not all people procrastinate the same, nor do we feel weak for the same activities.
You must identify what activities you use as an escape route. You will be surprised and discover that you are procrastinating more than you think.
Most importantly, you have to know the specific triggers of your behavior. Think about the situations in which you tend to procrastinate and look for your pattern. You will find the tasks and the moments in which the temptation is greater.
9. Don’t be so hard on yourself while trying to break free from procrastination.
Despite all of the above, keeping such a strict work rhythm is not good either. Being busy does not allow our creativity, among other skills, to develop properly. The key is to know how to balance our time to be able to carry out all the activities of the day and still have time for ourselves or to go out for coffee with friends if needed.
10. Get help from a professional
You can do all the planning, strategizing, and hypothesizing, but if you don’t take action, nothing’s going to change. The best way to get out of this habit holding you back and start taking action which will help you break free from procrastination is to seek professional help and I will be glad to be of help. If you’re looking for a great way to start, you can jump on a FREE consultation chat with me or grab my international best-selling eBook – The PRACTICE Method: A 30-Day Blueprint for Living Your Extraordinary Life.
The PRACTICE Method is a formula to discover yourself through tools that I intentionally, repeatedly, and routinely use. These tools are extremely powerful and will transform, not only the way you live. But it will also transform your mindset, break you free from procrastination, and ultimately lead you to the outcomes you desire. Click here to get it now
