Taming Time: Procrastination

Honestly, I could spend a whole month writing only about procrastination (and maybe I will; hey, December's posts aren't going to write themselves!). But for right now, I'm just going to touch on the topic and suggest a few time management strategies to deal with procrastination.

1. Find the value in every task. When what you're doing supports your goals and values, it's a lot easier to get up the juice to do it. Try to find what each particular task is adding to your life, and if it isn't adding much of anything? Outsource it or delete it.

2. Learn how much you can reasonably ask of yourself. The more impossible your to-do list looks, the less enthusiastic you're going to be about tackling it. Asking too much of yourself is essentially setting yourself up for failure, and why would you want to do that?

3. Learn how long it actually takes to do things. Sometimes, we overload ourselves because we have an unrealistic idea of how long it takes to do something. This is where an unobtrusive timer is invaluable: when you start doing something, start your timer in stopwatch mode and then put it somewhere out of your sightline. Once you're done, note how long it took you to do that task. Repeat the process the next few times you do that task so the "I'm being timed" factor is reduced and you have a realistic estimate of how long that task truly takes. I'm a repeat offender when it comes to this one, so I'll be doing this step right along with you.

4. Bribe yourself to start early. "I've got 15 days to do this, and it'll only take a couple of hours (see above); why start now?" That is the voice of procrastination talking. Give yourself a reason to start a project early: a bribe of some sort. Whatever kind of reward works for you, bestow it upon yourself when you start a project early.

5. Eat Ye Olde Frogge. Self-help author Brian Tracy has this great concept for overcoming the worst task in your day: if you know you've got to eat a frog, eat it first thing in the morning, so everything after that tastes a whole lot better. Combining the frog-eating with a reward can help you overcome that initial inertia that makes procrastination so easy.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think I need to devote several weeks to writing about procrastination in-depth. But for now, what sort of time-management tactics do you use to get around procrastination? Let me know in the comments!

Comments

[Derek]

Oh gadget, I was right with you till the frog-eating thing. Now I have to schedule in time for the Pepto to take effect. ;-)

Good post!

[Catherine Cantieri]

But think: anything you eat after that frog is gonna taste like caviar and Nutella! (Oh dear, I think I sent Derek back to the Pepto...)