Hey-o, dear readers! This is the second part in a four-part series to answer the question posed by my friend Felicia in response to a call for blog topics: "A "getting it all done"-sort of thing?"
There are four options to get something done: delegate it, defer it, delete it or do it. Today, we're talking about the second one of these, deferring something.
Before we go any further, I need to clarify the difference between deferring a task and procrastinating on it. When you defer something, you schedule it for a later date. When you procrastinate, you've still got that item on your plate and you know you should be doing something about it, probably now, but you just can't seem to manage it.
Boiled down, deferral is "it doesn't have to be done now." Procrastination is "I hope I don't ever have to do it."
To defer a task, you need to have a pretty clear idea of your own schedule and the timetable for that task. Some tasks have a clear due date, while others may be sequential in that they need to happen before something else can happen.
When deciding whether to defer something, consider how many items are on your to-do list and how much time and energy you can bring to each of them. Remember, too, that these items are cumulative, and that the later in the block of work time an item falls, the less remaining time and energy you're likely to have to devote to it.
If a task has no clear due date or dependent subsequent tasks, it's okay to defer. Similarly, if you recognize that you don't have the time and energy available to devote to the task, deferring it makes a lot of sense.
Keep an eye on your own patterns of task deferral. If you find yourself deferring 20% or more of your daily tasks, that's a sign that you're biting off more than you can chew and should begin delegating or deleting tasks rather than deferring them. And if you find yourself deferring a particular task day after day, that's a very clear sign that you simply don't want to do it. See if you can delegate it, delete it or find some way to reframe the task so you want to do it. (We'll talk more about those latter options next week.)
What about you? Have you found yourself wondering if you're deferring or just procrastinating? What patterns have you noticed in your deferrals? Let me know in the comments!
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