Eight Strategies to Make You Stop Procrastinating

Copy­right of Cor​bis​.Com and Tim Pannell

The begin­ning of every year is a dif­fi­cult time for so many of us mainly because we are bat­tling lethargy and lazi­ness. The long break kept us in a mood for party, reunions and eat­ing and it’s so much more dif­fi­cult to wake up from it and start our engines again.

Here are some tips from Erin Rooney Doland’s book UNCLUTTER YOUR LIFE IN ONE WEEK, which I got from Unclut­terer.

1. Sim­i­lar to what you might do when exer­cis­ing, play music with a fast rhythm.

2. If you drink caf­feine, con­sume it in small, fre­quent amounts instead of just one large cup at the begin­ning of the day.

3. Set time-specific goals in two-, five-, or ten-minute incre­ments. Iden­tify what you want to accom­plish in a very short amount of time, and then set a timer and go for it. [NOTE: I use the Pomodoro Tech­nique and it has done me won­ders. You might want to check it out your­self.]

4. Iso­late your­self. Remove the desire to pro­cras­ti­nate by not hav­ing any other options but to work.

5. Acknowl­edge that you’re pro­cras­ti­nat­ing. Often, just real­iz­ing that you’re putting some­thing off is enough to get you working.

6. Chal­lenge a col­league to see who can get the most work done in a set time period.

7. Ask some­one to help you stay account­able. There are pro­fes­sional moti­va­tors who will call you once a day to see how you’re doing, but a trusted and will­ing friend or coworker can do the same thing for free.

8. If the task doesn’t require much thought, lis­ten to an audio­book while you work. Agree to only lis­ten to the book when you’re work­ing on the project you don’t want to do. This way, you’ll be inter­ested in hear­ing more of the story each time you take on the unde­sir­able task.”