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15 Easy Ways to Stop Yourself from Procrastinating

Posted on by in Self-Improvement

You have a deadline that is threatening you. But instead of you starting the task to be done, you fiddle on random things such as visiting social media sites namely Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, checking emails and surfing blogs. You know that it’s time to move your muscles and start working, but you feel like doing anything other than the task itself.

ways-to-stop-yourself-from-procrastinating

Everyone knows the idea of procrastination. When we procrastinate, we spend our time recklessly and worry about important things later and we do those things until the deadline itself. And when it’s already late, we start panicking and wish we started earlier. We all know some of this chronic procrastinator spent most of their years in this type of cycle. Delaying work, postpone things, be lazy, hide from work, work when it’s really unavoidable, repeat. It is definitely one of our habits that knock the bottom of us and hinders us to achieve more extreme results than we expected.

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Don’t let procrastination put you behind. If you never start, you will never have the chance of failing. And without failing, you will never succeed. Here are fifteen steps on how to beat procrastination and do your task way before your deadline.

1. Break your task into little chunks

Maybe part of the reason why you delay your work is because you think, it is too overwhelming for you. If that is the case, why don’t you try breaking it into little parts? Focus on one part at a time. If you still find yourself procrastinating after doing this, break it down further. Break it into chunks that soon you will realize that the job is pretty simple that you want to finish it right away. What other people do is they focus on one phase without worrying about the next. Worry about it later when you’re already done with the last phase.

2. Try changing your environment

changing-environment

There are times when you think that the environment is not doing any good to you because you just don’t seem to feel like doing anything. It’s because different environment has its own impact when it comes to our productivity. Take a look at your work area. Does it encourage you to do work or it invites you to sleep? If it’s the latter one, then you need to take into consideration changing your workstation.

3. Commit to assignments

We already tackled about breaking your task into small portions to prevent yourself from being overwhelmed. After breaking all of those, list them on a piece of paper. List it like a checklist. Make it a habit to check and update the things that you already did. How can it help you? It actually rebuilds your faith in your own abilities (because you were able to finish a task). It also makes you commit in making good on your promises.

4. Create a comprehensive timeline and a particular deadline

set-deadline

You chose to have 1 deadline for your task. Unknowingly, creating one deadline for your task is like inviting yourself to procrastinate. That is because you are thinking of a specific date of deadline and that you still have time left to prepare for that when in fact you do not. As what we tackled in tip number 1, break your tasks in chunks and create a specific deadline for all of those chunks. In this way, you will be able to finish one task in a given period of time. Your time period must be something powerful. That means you need to do this on or before your due date or else you will put the rest of your task in jeopardy. This will ensure that you will get everything done by that time.

5. Lessen or even eliminate your pit stops

You make it easy for you to procrastinate. That is maybe why you procrastinate too much. What you have to do is visit your search engine bookmarks, remove any site, blogs or anything that will make you procrastinate. Disable desktop notification for your email client. Make sure you stay away from something that distracts you when you’re working. Some procrastinators even delete or deactivate their Facebook accounts but we don’t say you should do the same. But if it’s really taking its toll on your body, then go for it.

6. Get along with people who inspire you to work

people-inspiration

If you can, talk to Steve Jobs or Bill Gates within a couple of minutes rather than doing anything else then do so. For sure they will inspire you to work rather than to waste your time on nothing in particular. The people we talk to, bond with and those who encircle us influence our behavior. Of course, it would be a miracle to bond with Steve Jobs or Bill Gates everyday but I’m referring to the same principle. Look for a friend, a schoolmate in college, or a colleague that would inspire you to work out your muscles – and needless to say, hang out with them often. Because the more you hang out with them, you will soon inherit their drive and their spirit towards work too.

7. Look for a partner

Having someone as a companion would make the task a little more fun. Exquisitely, look for someone who sets his/her goals prior to working. It’s not really necessary for you both to have the same sets of goals, but it would be better if it will be so you can learn from each other.

8. Share your goals

This tip actually shares the same function in finding a perfect partner but on with a larger crowd. Tell your colleagues, acquaintances and even your family about the project that you are currently working with that. For example, try sharing your projects on Facebook or Twitter. Often times, your readers would actually ask you some updates on it. And that will surely inspire you to finish your project as fast as you can.

9. Look for people who accomplished it

elon-musk-accomplishments

You want to do something, good. But what is it that you want to achieve? Who are those who already achieved results? Seek them out and try connecting with them. Seeing a live and kicking proof that your objectives are attainable if only you would take action is an inspiration to do the task as soon as possible.

10. Re-analyze your goals

You noticed that you are already procrastinating for quite some time now, then consider re-clarifying your goals. It might be a misalignment between what you want to achieve and what you are doing for the mean time. Most of the time, we surpass our goals as we find out more from ourselves, but we should not change our goals to pair that. What you have to do is have a quick break. Let’s say a vacation or a weekend getaway will do. Take time to ponder about these questions: What do you really want to achieve? What steps need to be taken for you to get it? Does your work coordinate with your plans? If it doesn’t, what can you do to fix it?

11. Do not indulge in fantasy

We tend to aim for dreamy results. Thus, it triggers the perfectionist side in us. And being perfectionism frequently delay tasks. What can you do? Stop fantasizing about your desired results that are way too unrealistic. Instead, conceive of a practical, realistic and feasible steps on how to achieve it. Why you need to do that? Imagination is the worst enemy of motivation and aside from that, viewing results and outcomes objectively improves your energy towards work.

12. Do not complicate things

You cannot start the task because you are waiting for the perfect timing? Cannot determine the perfect timing because of A, B, C, D, and the rest of the alphabet reasons? Then we tell you, forget that mentality as it will just keep you from waiting for one and in the end, you will not accomplish anything. Being a perfectionist is one of the major reasons why people become procrastinators.

13. Try creating challenging tasks

challenging-task

Your enthusiasm and your excitement affects your behavior in finishing your task. And most often, when you think your tasks are too simple for you, you tend to lose your enthusiasm and excitement over it. Try creating challenging tasks to fuel your excitement towards it. But here is the thing, although you need to create challenging tasks to maintain your interest, those should also be as reasonable as possible for you not to be discouraged – which frequently results in abandonment before you complete the whole task.

14. Take control and just do it

At the end of all the delaying and slacking, it falls down to taking action. You can strategize, plan, and hypothesize. Do something. Because if you don’t take action, nothing will really be done. Most of the time, we encounter people who keep on complaining about their present situation but doesn’t take any action to get out of that particular situation. Our personal tip to everyone is you may have something that you’re procrastinating on, a project, a homework or something related to work or whatever it may be, if you want to get it done, you really have to take control of yourself and just do it.

15. Reward yourself

Spending and investing too much on something may cause you to lose interest on it and even resent it. You should put in mind that a hard work should always be rewarded. Make up your own rewards. Let’s say, for example, reward yourself of a nice meal in your favorite restaurant, a trip to the movies, or even a weekend getaway with your friends. Reward yourself after completing a task, a project, or something that you want to finish. This will help in keeping the fire burning inside you to finish your task.

Takeaway

The more boring, overwhelming, meaningless and unplanned a task is, the more likely we are to procrastinate with that task. These are just some of the easy steps on how to avoid procrastination. Do you have some weird yet helpful tips that you recently discovered? Share it with us in the comment box!

Author: Jenny Granados

Jenny Granados is a passionate blogger and a gadget enthusiast. She likes to keep herself up to date with the latest technology trends and advancements. She is a writer in behalf of Skyphonez.

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