If you are a successful entrepreneur and money is just rolling in, then you don’t ever have to deal with the bad habit that is procrastination, right? Not necessarily. Everyone procrastinates from time to time. Of course, some procrastinate more than others.
Procrastination really becomes a problem when it starts to affect your life, or when you start missing deadlines. Some people thrive off of procrastination. When the clock is almost at zero, they do their best work. With that said, doing your work at the last possible minute is not a great way to live. After all, when you push something off until the last minute, it’s likely always in your head, so you can’t fully focus on the present moment.
Just because everyone procrastinates from time to time, though, that does not mean it is okay, especially if you are making a habit out of it. If you want to finally put procrastination in the past, then these lessons on how to defeat it should do you wonders.
How To Defeat The Bad Habit That Is Procrastination
- Master The Art Of Prioritizing
- Stop Fearing Things That Haven’t Happened Yet
- Eliminate Any And All Distractions
- Make A Schedule That You Can Actually Accomplish
- Make Your Workplace Environment More Enjoyable
Master The Art Of Prioritizing
Do your most important tasks in the morning, or whenever you get up. Just look at it this way: If you do your most important things in the morning — in other words, if you prioritize your work — you can likely coast through the rest of your day. Not to mention, you will ideally get the things that are due first out of the way, which will help with your stress levels.
The key is to get done with your most important tasks first so you aren’t worrying about them for the entire day. If your most important work is also your toughest or longest task, then split it up into several parts. This will help these larger tasks not seem as overwhelming, and will help you kill the nasty habit that is procrastination.
Stop Fearing Things That Haven’t Happened Yet
If I don’t get this project done on time, I am going to get fired. If I don’t do my best work on this big-time project, then someone else is going to get the promotion. Sound familiar?
If so, read this next sentence very closely. Stop fearing things that haven’t happened yet. On the flip side, don’t celebrate a promotion until you are actually given a promotion.
How does this relate to procrastination, you ask? Well, you haven’t missed your deadline until you have — you guessed it — missed your deadline. You haven’t botched an assignment until the very moment you botch an assignment.
We procrastinate because we fear something much greater, such as doing bad on a specific job. We procrastinate because we fear something will take a good amount of time or it will be too hard to accomplish. Stop procrastinating, tackle your fears and get to work.
Eliminate Any And All Distractions
When it comes to kicking the bad habit that is procrastination, eliminating any and all distractions is perhaps the easiest thing you can do. Turn your phone off for an hour, forget about television, don’t check your social media networks and make sure you are in an environment that is 100 percent free of distractions.
Once you do this, you will be able to focus on your work. After that, you will likely get in the zone, which will lead to you actually finishing work. Take that, procrastination.
Make A Schedule That You Can Actually Accomplish
How many times have you changed your schedule this week? Are you changing it because new things pop up, or are you changing it because you are pushing projects off until the next day?
When you are making your schedule, which should be a process that you do every single day, you need to make sure said schedule is manageable. If your schedule seems overwhelming on paper, it likely isn’t going to be any easier when you actually get to work. This is where the fear concept comes into play.
On another note, if you don’t think you have enough time in the day to get everything accomplished, then what are you doing watching TV for a couple of hours at night? Yes, unwinding is an important part of the process that should take place every night, but it’s all about making sacrifices. If you have time to watch TV, then you have time to finish all of your work.
Back to the point. Don’t let procrastination win. Make a schedule that you can actually accomplish, one that isn’t too overwhelming.
Make Your Workplace Environment More Enjoyable
Your workplace, your desk, should be a place where you actually want to work. If it’s a complete mess or unmotivating in any sense of the word, then make fixes to undo that. Don’t let procrastination rear its ugly head just because your workplace environment isn’t enjoyable.
When you get to your desk, simply looking at it should motivate you to get to work.
To learn more about Kevin Harrington, make sure you like him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and check him out on LinkedIN. You can also check out more blogs by following this link.
