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If procrastination keeps you form being as productive as you want or need to be, there are some tricks you can use to overcome procrastination. These tricks involve making the activities you procrastinate on
More Simple
More Pleasant
More Interesting
(You might prefer to view these as less boring, less unpleasant, less complex.)
One way of making a task more simple is to break it into smaller tasks. For example, consider the task "Pay income tax." If you put that task on your ToDo list, how long is it going to stay there (especially if you think you will owe tax)? It'll probably stay on your ToDo list until you come up against the deadline. But, if you break the task up into smaller steps (round up records on tax deductible items, buy the latest tax software, do a rough draft of taxes, ...), the task is likely to get done much sooner than it would otherwise.
The trick of making a task more pleasant can even be applied to the disgusting example of "Pay income tax." For example, you can make a game out of finding ways of reducing your tax. You can even get your family involved and offer a reward for the person finding the best tax-reduction techniques. The more creative you are (which comes with practice), the better you become at making unpleasant tasks more pleasant.
Other tricks you can use are to make lists, prioritize items on those lists, and "eat the frog first." This last item relates to the old joke "If you start your morning out by eating a frog, the rest of the day is almost surely going to get better than it started." That is, start your day by doing something you need to do but that you really don't want to do. The rest of the day goes easier and with less stress, partly because you just feel better from getting the task out of the way.
Overcoming procrastination can take some discipline, a word that strikes fear in the hearts of many folks, including me. But I can generally get the fear to subside, when I work at it, by focusing on what Lou Holtz says about discipline: "Discipline is Not what you Do TO yourself -- it is what you Do FOR yourself."
And, speaking of doing something for yourself, don't forget to give yourself a reward when you do make progress on overcoming procrastination. Rewarding positive behaviors helps turn them into habits.
More Simple
More Pleasant
More Interesting
(You might prefer to view these as less boring, less unpleasant, less complex.)
One way of making a task more simple is to break it into smaller tasks. For example, consider the task "Pay income tax." If you put that task on your ToDo list, how long is it going to stay there (especially if you think you will owe tax)? It'll probably stay on your ToDo list until you come up against the deadline. But, if you break the task up into smaller steps (round up records on tax deductible items, buy the latest tax software, do a rough draft of taxes, ...), the task is likely to get done much sooner than it would otherwise.
The trick of making a task more pleasant can even be applied to the disgusting example of "Pay income tax." For example, you can make a game out of finding ways of reducing your tax. You can even get your family involved and offer a reward for the person finding the best tax-reduction techniques. The more creative you are (which comes with practice), the better you become at making unpleasant tasks more pleasant.
Other tricks you can use are to make lists, prioritize items on those lists, and "eat the frog first." This last item relates to the old joke "If you start your morning out by eating a frog, the rest of the day is almost surely going to get better than it started." That is, start your day by doing something you need to do but that you really don't want to do. The rest of the day goes easier and with less stress, partly because you just feel better from getting the task out of the way.
Overcoming procrastination can take some discipline, a word that strikes fear in the hearts of many folks, including me. But I can generally get the fear to subside, when I work at it, by focusing on what Lou Holtz says about discipline: "Discipline is Not what you Do TO yourself -- it is what you Do FOR yourself."
And, speaking of doing something for yourself, don't forget to give yourself a reward when you do make progress on overcoming procrastination. Rewarding positive behaviors helps turn them into habits.