With many people working from home at the moment we would imagine that we have more time to achieve more in our day, to be more efficient, effective and productive. We do however need to be cautious that procrastination does not start to creep in. As an old saying states” If you want a job doing give it to a busy Person”.
A definition of procrastination is “Putting something off to tomorrow that should have been done today”
Others signs of procrastination are many items on your lists that have been there for a while and lots of great ideas that never happen.
We look at the many reasons why we procrastinate in our Time Management course, here are a few:
- ‘It has to be Perfect’
- ‘I must not fail’
- ‘I need help’
- ‘I won’t be told how to do things’
These are all beliefs that we need to soften. For example:
“I must not fail” would become “I will do my best”
Here are 10 top tips to jumpstart Procrastination:
- More Challenging – Set challenging goals enough to stimulate interest, but not so difficult to demoralise
- A suitable reward – Think of a reward for yourself that matches the challenge you have set yourself
- Penalty Points – Thinks about a way of ‘punishing’ yourself if you don’t achieve what you set out to do
- Double, not quit – Double your estimate of how long a task will take
- Dive in – Tackle the tough stuff first
- Move – Stand up, change position, go outside – anything to change your mood
- The fast set – Mix with people who will motivate you to achieve your task
- Bite size is right – Break the task down into smaller chunks and identify an end point for each
- Time fragments – Instead of booking an hour, break this down into four 15 minute slots
- 5 Minute start – Do it for five minutes, then decide whether you want to continue, if you do then commit another five minutes, then repeat and repeat and repeat.
We cover more on procrastination in our time management training course. Don’t Procrastinate! Checkout our time management course overview.We deliver our time management course as an online training course or as an in-person training course
