Effective ways to stop procrastination

Procrastination

When you procrastinate you still get things done but it is done at the last minute under pressure, feeling overwhelmed, and getting exhausted. Here are some suggestions to beat procrastination and get things done promptly, easily, and smoothly:

1. Long to-do list: Having too much to do in a day will surely discourage you to take action. Identify and do just one or two important tasks for the day. It will erase your anxiety of having too much to do in too short a time.

2. Disorganized: Plan ahead and organize your daily life, act according to your to-do list and focus your energy on a few important tasks.

3. Fear of failures: According to Anthony Robbins: do what you fear, and the death of fear is certain. Do not fear failures, these are just temporary setbacks, when you keep trying, one day you will be successful. There is no permanent failure except you fail to act and stop going at it

4. Do it now: When you are in a habit of postponing things to do, it hurts your self-esteem and self-confidence because you are getting nowhere. Can you replace your habit of delaying doing things? Get into the habit of doing it now. When you change your bad habit, you build up your self-confidence and your self-image. 

5. No incentives: Think of all the advantages of getting things done promptly. You build the trust of others in you.  You also establish a good working habit. You are no longer a procrastinator. 

6. Poor self-management: Procrastinators do not care much about personal health, good eating habits,s and sleeping sufficiently. Take control of your life, adopt a positive mental attitude and impose self-discipline such as getting up early, taking your breakfast, doing exercise daily so that you are alert and energetic.

7. Go for pleasant tasks instead of unpleasant ones: Do it the other way round, get the difficult task done first and reward yourself with other easy jobs.

     Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.
     Dale Carnegie

8. Goal setting: Start with a small goal and take the first baby step so that you can achieve a small success.  Continue with the next step and the next to reach your goal.

9. Avoid clutter: The easier way to have clutter is to procrastinate like allowing the paper to pile up on your desk until it becomes unmanageable. Take action and  make it a daily habit to arrange things in their proper place

10. Mindset: Adopt an attitude of urgency. It does matter how mundane or small a task is, just get into the habit of doing it right away. Switch off the TV and wash the dishes.

Putting off an easy thing makes it hard.  Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.  ~George Claude Lorimer