Procrastination affects everyone. It’s at its highest when people are tired or bored, but for some, procrastination could be an addiction. These people tend to avoid work all day that is right in front of them, only to go home and finish it late at night. Desperately trying to finish an assignment, and losing sleep over for which could have been easily completed beforehand. Since the summer is around the corner it's even more difficult to get work done when you’re stuck at work, wishing you were spending time with your family and friends. Even though we all know that procrastination is not the right way to get work done, we all still do it anyway, because we get lazy. Recent studies show that procrastination increases stress, reduces the performance level and leads to poor health. When there is a difficult task in front of us, we all get confused as to how to conquer this particular task. And this is when we start coming up with excuses. To become more productive at getting work done, I have a few strategies so you can overcome procrastination:
1. “Where do I begin?”
When a task is particularly difficult, you need all the time you are given to complete it. You shouldn’t be wasting valuable time by allowing yourself to be overwhelmed. The strategy here is to not fear the huge stack of papers sitting in front of you and how much work needs to be completed. When something looks that difficult, it's easier to break it down. Breaking your task into shorter periods allows you to move quickly through the process of completion. Before you know it, you’ve accomplished something, and the task goes from way too hard to absolutely nothing.
2. “Too many distractions.”
Procrastination happens because we don’t even know where to start with this challenge. We stumble over smaller, irrelevant distractions that creep upon us when we finally sit down to start on completing this task. We answer emails, make phone calls, anything to avoid the work at hand. Being busy is not the same as being productive. Slow down and visualize what will happen if you continue to put it off. Reminding yourself to focus and getting the work done is a great way to make distractions less.
3. “I don’t like it.”
Sometimes, you just don’t want to do the task at hand. It can be very hard to get moving on a task in which you’re disinterested, or much less, despise. Unfortunately, there’s no way to find something that you’re interested in, rather than pushing these tasks make it a rule that you cannot touch any other project or task until you have finished with the current task. For example, it's like forcing yourself to “eat your vegetables before you can have dessert.” Even if it's something that you don’t want to do, it's something that needs to be done. There isn’t a way to work around these tasks. So maybe give yourself a reward after completing each task, this way you will motivate yourself till the end of the finish line.
