“Procrastination makes easy things hard, and hard things harder.” – Mason Cooley, American aphorist.
Do you know studies have shown that men procrastinate more than women. But that doesn’t mean women don’t need to look at this.
If it affects you in the wrong way, we must work on this problem. Procrastinating is not a wholly bad thing, but the aftereffects are negative. It causes guilt, mental stress and so on. This also causes some severe problems if you become pro at procrastinating.
What is procrastination?
According to Cambridge Dictionary, the definition of procrastination is, ‘the act of delaying something that must be done, often because it is unpleasant or boring.’ In simpler words, keep postponing some important work by thinking to do it later and most of the time, keep doing unnecessary stuff at that time.
It is our natural tendency to keep pushing things we need to do in time; I too did this very often. According to the definition, the act could be unpleasant or boring. But there are other reasons too. Everybody has their reasons, but some very common reasons are –
- Just not feeling like doing that thing at that time.
- Don’t have enough knowledge to do that work.
- Don’t find it ‘that’ important at the time of doing
- Thinking it can be done in a short period of time
- Being overwhelmed by the amount of pending work
- Not feeling enough motivated
By procrastinating more often, we form this as a habit. Fighting procrastination means we already have built a bad habit of procrastinating.
If we don’t fight in its early stage, like every other bad habit, it will start controlling our life in a bad way. For that, we need to first identify and admit and then act accordingly, as we don’t love to consider our fault.
In this blog, we’ll look into 10 practical ways to fight procrastination so that we don’t have to face the struggles on a daily basis.
Let’s dive in…
Ways to fight procrastination
1.Motivate yourself
Think about why you started doing whatever you have to do.
We can get motivation in every way from everyone, including you.
Don’t always look for motivation from the outer world. Because it won’t be available to you all the time.
Try to find them within yourself, as you are the one who always will be with you every moment. Keep reminding yourself why you started.
2. Create a suitable environment for yourself
Oh! This is one of the most effective ways to get your work done. The space has the power to change your mood.
Just organising your space can make an impact on your work. A clean, freshly organised area helps to focus well. If it doesn’t, change it if possible.
Cleaning your workplace, spraying your favourite scent on the curtains, adding an alarm clock and a comfortable room temperature can help enhance your performance. Make your work/study space interesting.
But try to avoid working on bed. It’s the worst idea. I tried many times, and the result was nothing but a waste of time. You can even fall asleep if you get too relaxed.
So try otherwise.
3. Prioritize your work
To fight procrastination, we first need to know which work should be done and which shouldn’t.
Because we start procrastinating when we don’t complete the needed works on time, and they get all piled up. Then our energy doesn’t cooperate with us, and we get tired and can’t finish them.
In the meantime, we do lesser-needed things as they are easy (most of the time) and probably entertaining. Here, prioritizing works is important. You can rank them in a list according to their importance and urgency and start following them.
4. Identify the distractions
No one in the world can claim the fact that they don’t get distracted by anything at all. We all face distractions at several times, regardless of what we’re doing.
Some of the said distractions we create actively by not realising their depth; some we face passively by our circumstances.
Either way, the result is negative as we postpone our works at that time. And if it happens once, it’s okay.
But we tend to make it a regular basis and procrastination a habit.
Here, we need to list down the distractions, identify which we can control and focus on them only.
- You can keep your phone’s notifications off if any sound on your working space is disturbing you.
- Turn on DND (do not disturb) mode.
- You can simply change the place for a while.
See, it won’t stop the next day, but after some days of practicing there would definitely be some changes. Just like the way you made the habit of procrastination.
5. Make a to-do list
Making a list for your daily work is very beneficial. It saves time, as you don’t need to make whole new plans at the time of the work. You just follow them.
When the works become too much, we even don’t feel like completing them.
If we think about all the stuff we need to do in our mind only, we often mix them up or mostly forget them. Thus, we lose the track and start procrastinating.
Here, to simply do them, we need to make a to-do list. Making lists gives us clarity, insights about our goals, clear pictures about our work, and so on.
You can get the view of completed works and yet-to-do things easily.
Another thing is, you can make a to-do list for days, weeks, months, or 1 year also.
Lists for days and weeks are most effective, in my opinion, as they serve the quick next and help us to fight procrastination.
6. Be disciplined
Being disciplined has always helped me to keep on track. Motivation works best to start any job, but discipline keeps you moving.
If discipline is not included in your personality traits, you can lose track. Look, nobody can be motivated every time they work. Here discipline comes to rescue us.
I, personally, had faced a lot of setbacks in my life due to lack of discipline. Like you all, initially I was very much motivated, but as the time passed, I found myself struggling to get the motivation back.
That’s not a simple thing to do every time. As a result, I started procrastinating my simple daily work and made a big bunch of it.
Now at that time, if you are disciplined, you don’t need any motivation as Elbert Hubbard said, “Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.”
So discipline is very much important in order to fight procrastination.
7. Don’t go too harsh on yourself
When we procrastinate on most of our daily work and realise that there are mammoth things we have to do, we start feeling guilty about the wasted time and stressing ourself very much.
For that matter we even can’t complete. Because to finish that amount of work one by one, we need to focus properly. Feeling stress and guilt drains our energy and affects us negatively.
They won’t help either way. So, keep those emotions far from you and focus on things on time.
8. Track your tasks
Tracking all the tasks you are aiming to do helps a lot. In order to complete them within time, we should track them properly. It’s not enough to just make lists.
Tracking the tasks is very much needed to know our position, where we are standing on our path and how much we achieved or have to achieve in the given time.
There are several ways to track them. You can make an excel sheet to check the progress, or you can write it as a note on your PC. Another way is to write manually in your notebook.
Though this one is a bit of a time-taking process, as we need to make the row, column, boxes, write all the tasks and so on. But if your lists are not long enough, you can opt for this.
Gradually, when you finish the tasks one by one and tick the boxes, you will be relaxed and energised by the happy feeling of achievement, no matter how small they are.
9. Listen some good music pieces
While doing the task, you can listen to some good music. Most of the time music helps to create a soothing and relaxing state. You can choose the music according to the work you’re doing.
I personally love to listen to classic piano pieces. It helps me focus.
If you are listening to songs in your native language, chances are you start singing (not bad though) and thinking about the song’s backgrounds.
As a result, your focus shifts and you fail to finish the tasks in time. So, I recommend you to listen the music passively by not giving it too much thought. Use it wisely as a companion for the task, not as a distraction.
10. Give yourself reward
Everyone loves to be rewarded. To get some gifts after achieving a goal, even a smaller one, can be exciting.
We can use this way to fight procrastination. It’s very simple. Every time we finish a work, we will reward ourselves.
But don’t involve much in the process of rewarding. Not necessarily it must be a materialistic present. It can be otherwise.
- You can reward yourself with just a small walk in your garden.
- Watching an episode of any recent series.
- Standing on the balcony to get some fresh air.
These will help you to regain your focus and energy.
Conclusion
So, these are the 10 ways to fight procrastination. If you find them helpful, you can apply them in your daily life to overcome procrastination and grow.
Comment your thoughts on this.
Take care,
Make the most of your day,
Until we meet again…
