Procrastination is one of the biggest weakness of nowadays, the worst person you could hire in your company is the procrastinator: not the one unable of working in team, not the one unable to make the right decision, not the one unable of organize his own work, just the procrastinator.
Just reading these few first lines you can understand how much attention has been given to this word, probably without a real reason.
Being a procrastinator could be a problem in a work environment but there are several ways to get it for the better.
I should probably start explaining what a procrastinator is and why procrastination is the big enemy of your productivity:
“to procrastinate: to keep delaying something that must be done, often because it is unpleasant or boring”
This explanation could sound really familiar, probably it has happened to all of us to procrastinate something important that was felt as unpleasant or really boring, but what if you end up procrastinating day by day all your most important task?
The main reason of procrastinating is well explained in this post of Blake Thorne, I really suggest you to read it.
http://blog.idonethis.com/procrastination/
What I really love of this post was that at the end it comes with a very intuitive way to start beating your procrastination problem, a very simple approach to the problem, just ask yourself: is this task really important or you could just delete it?
Blake Thorne create list of few questions that you should answer about your task to know if it just can be avoided.
In case you can do that, simply removing the task from the list, you are done. Otherwise you may have founded the value of the task you are working one having the right boost to start working on it. But what if that task is really boring and useless but needs to be done? How many times our boss give us a task that is pretty hard to close but with a very high priority?
This is a list of 5 tricks to avoid procrastination and start working on that awful task 🙂 and finally turn procrastination into productivity
1) Divide the task in smaller problems and analyze it
sometimes procrastination seems the only way out because you are overwhelmed buy a problem that seems to complex to be solved, well, dividing it into smaller tasks will help you defining the problem itself and identify which are the key point that really get you annoyed, if you identify these points you can even ask for someone help to complete them and get your big project done.
2) Prioritize things to do
The second step, once you have divided the big task in smaller ones, is just to prioritize them. This is another trick to identify those points that give you anxiety, in fact you will probably put them at the end of the list. Once you get those, you can even start with point one again, dividing them into even smaller tasks, the smaller you get the better.
3) Be kind to yourself and pay attention to the future you:
This is a very interesting aspect, that I always use when I have to face big problems that I would really love to procrastinate. Think about your future you once the work will be done, so relieved, so proud of himself, this should give you the right mood to start that awful task, and even if you are not able to do that be kind with yourself, always remember to ask the help of your colleague for a task that you can’t accomplish, this is the meaning of teamwork.
4) Avoid interruptions
Try to avoid interruption as much as you can, if you are finally able to start working on your hard task being interrupted will put you again in the state of start.
5) Taste your small success
Every time you close one of these tasks be proud of yourself and take a moment to taste your success, be proud of yourself and keep this mood to close all your next tasks.
