24 Tips To Beat Your Procrastination Habit

Before I start, let’s get a definition out of the way: procrastination is the act or habit of putting off or delaying something requiring immediate attention. It may be doing easy or enjoyable tasks instead of more important or urgent ones, or choosing to do pleasurable activities (e.g. watching TV or using social media) instead of less pleasurable activities (e.g. household chores or assigned projects).

Many (or even most?) people procrastinate – but some do it a lot more than others.

I have to confess, I have been a life-long procrastinator, although I’m getting better (and not before time). I even used to joke I was so bad at starting things that I even put my procrastinating off until tomorrow.

Seriously, though, for those of us who are guilty of this bad habit, it’s time to put an end to it, because there are all sorts of costs involved.

Here are a bunch of tips to help you beat procrastination – some are more relevant to business life, and some to home life.

Own It

The most important tip is to admit to yourself that you not only procrastinate, but that it is a choice you make.

For the most part, you cannot blame anybody else, and when you find yourself wasting time on Twitter, for example, it was you that chose to do that instead of what you were meant to be doing.

Decide To Change

Once you’ve owned up to your bad habit, and are willing to take responsibility for it, the next step is to decide that you want to change.

This is not “I really should stop procrastinating” – because that is just not good enough.

It needs to be a lot more positive, like “I am going to stop procrastinating.”

Understand Your Procrastination

Different people put off different types of tasks, so write down a list of the things that you know you choose to delay.

These may be making telephone calls, paying bills, visiting family, household chores (e.g. mowing the lawn, washing the car), buying presents, or even meditating.

Once you know where your weak areas are, you can focus on those specific problems.

Confront Your Choices

When you find yourself procrastinating, ask yourself what it is that you are choosing to delay. Even though you might start by telling yourself that you’ll “just check Facebook”, there is usually something you’re subconsciously trying to avoid.

So, write it down and make sure you are fully aware of what it is you’re attempting to avoid, and why.

Write Down Goals You Missed Because You Procrastinated

Try to think of, and write down, occasions where your choice to put off something you know you should have done had a tangible cost. For example:

• Not handing in a report at work on time cost you a promotion or bonus. (At worst, chronic procrastination, or underperforming, might even cost you your job.)
• Paying a bill late cost you a penalty charge.
• Leaving your present buying to the last minute meant your child was upset because they did not receive the item they wanted.
• Delaying doing household repairs ended up costing you a lot more money because you ended up having to replace the entire item since it was now beyond repair.
• And looking to the future, putting off writing your will could leave those you care about in difficult situations, wasting valuable time trying to deal with what you should have already done.

Once you understand that your choices have a real cost (e.g. financial, opportunity, emotional), to you or those you care about, you will have found your motivation to do better.

Use Affirmations

Affirmations are positive statements that activate your mind to change your life, one thought at a time.

So, you could create affirmations that say things like:

• I get things done.
• I work on the most important tasks first, regardless of how difficult they may be.
• I prioritize my work well.

I talk a lot more about affirmations in Lesson 1.2 of the Brain Training For Success course.

Prioritize Your To Do List

Firstly, of course, you should actually create a To Do list if you don’t already have one.

You should write down everything you need to do, including both personal- and work-related tasks. (You can either put these on the same list, but use tags or categories to separate them, or you can maintain separate lists.)

Once you have a list, go through it and decide which is your number one priority – the one that is the most important or most urgent. Again, you might have one top priority for personal tasks and one for business.

And remember, by definition, you can only have one top priority task. (I used to work for a company where they would often have multiple “top priority” projects, and the result, not surprisingly, was that resources were used ineffectively and none of the projects were completed on time.)

One useful tool to help you decide how to classify a task is the Eisenhower Matrix:

Once you assess whether a task is urgent or not urgent, and important or not important, it becomes easy to know how to deal with it.

Stick To Your To Do List

This is a natural follow-on from the previous tip, but it’s a fact of life that new tasks will pop up all the time.

However, you need to decide where on your To Do list that new task should slot in and, crucially, does it replace the current top priority one.

You need to think really hard about doing this though – if you keep changing your top priority, then you’ll never accomplish anything. Instead, you’ll end up with a whole bunch of incomplete projects.

My wife used to come up with new ideas and things she thought we should do all the time – and it used to irritate her no end when I would ask where that new item should fit into the current list of things I was working on. But it’s the only way to manage things if you want to accomplish anything.

Simplify

It’s so easy these days to accumulate clutter (both physical, such as household gadgets we don’t use or that don’t even work, as well as intangible, such as email newsletters we subscribed to a long time ago and never read), so it’s a good idea to have a ruthless purge of stuff you no longer need.

The fewer the items you have to think about, the less likely it is you will get distracted and end up procrastinating.

Budget

One reason why people put off paying bills is because they don’t have the money, and one reason why they don’t have the money is because they haven’t created a budget.

When you understand what your incomings and outgoings are, you will be better able to allocate money appropriately and pay bills as soon as you receive them.

That also means you will be less likely to forget to pay them on time, with consequences like paying late fees, or, worse, being cut off by, say, the electricity company.

Chunking

Large, complex tasks are more likely to be put off than smaller, simpler ones – because they appear more daunting.

However, if you break tasks down into smaller, more manageable ones, you are not only more likely to get started on the first one because it seems more doable, but you’ll also feel more motivated to do the next one once you have that sense of accomplishment at completing the previous task.

Meal Planning

It’s so easy to run out of time to cook so you order fast food instead, but there is a cost to that, of course – your health.

Most fast food or convenience food is not particularly good for you (e.g. it may be loaded with hidden sugars or untested additives), but this is an invisible consequence of putting things off.

So, create a meal plan, then you’ll know that what you’ll be eating will be healthy, and schedule it in, so you’ll know when you must start preparing the meal.

Visualization

When deciding whether to put off an assignment or job (e.g. homework, washing the car, writing that report), try to visualize how you’ll feel once you’ve completed it.

Be honest, isn’t it going to feel better than leaving things until the last minute, putting yourself potentially under additional but unnecessary pressure?

Eliminate Distractions

Since many people are distracted by the plethora of electronic devices (e.g televisions, smartphone and tablets) these days, if you want to get something done, the easy way is to turn off your device.

Alternatively, you can disable notifications (because those pings and beeps are hard to ignore – deliberately so), or you could leave your phone on your desk but turn it upside down so you cannot see the screen.

Another option is to use one of those apps that restricts access to certain sites (e.g. Facebook) during specified hours.

Good Enough Is Good Enough

This one is for the perfectionists – a habit I have tried for years to break.

When you strive for perfection, you often end up achieving less.

One reason for this is because you feel like you need all the information that’s available on a given topic before writing your report. The downside to this is, of course, that perfect information rarely exists, and all you end up doing is putting off the important work – writing the report, in this example.

A perfectionist might also feel they have to make tweak after tweak to their work, because it’s not perfect, which wastes time and effort. They may also use this an excuse to put off the next job, because they don’t want to do it.

The key is to accept that good enough is good enough, and stop at that point.

Learn To Say No

We often feel under pressure (e.g. from family, friends, colleagues) to participate in an activity that we know we really don’t have time for.

Peer pressure is an incredibly strong force, which is why we often acquiesce, even when we know we shouldn’t.

The answer is simply to say “No”.

And I realize this can be really difficult, but sometimes it’s the only way to get things done and maintain your sanity.

Remember too that you do not need to justify your “No”. If you do, you only give people additional information to use as leverage to get you to agree to something you shouldn’t do.

Check Messages To A Schedule

It’s so tempting to keep checking for new emails, but it’s a big distraction that diverts your attention from what you should be doing – and procrastinators use this as a way of delaying more important work.

I used to do this a lot in the office – I would fool around with Outlook, checking emails, my calendar, and To Do list, rather than get any work done. And when I used to walk up and down the building, I was surprised at how many of the hundreds of staff were spending a lot of time in Outlook too – I never saw how that could be productive.

Many smart business people check their emails maybe two or three times a day only – once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and perhaps once after they return from lunch.

Doing this, however hard it may be at first, will help you focus on the tasks you need to be doing.

Touch Correspondence Once

Following on from the previous tip, make sure that when it is time to check emails (or read memos / letters), that you do it efficiently.

Firstly, refer back to the Eisenhower Matrix above to see whether you need to deal with it at all.

Otherwise, the Touch It Once principle says that if you think you can deal with it in five minutes or less, do it immediately. And if you can’t, and it’s definitely something you need to deal with, add it to your To Do list and schedule it for later.

If you don’t do this, then you end up opening and reading the same emails, say, over and over again, and each time you tell yourself that you’ll deal with it later – and, needless to say, that rarely happens.

Do What You Hate First

Some people choose to prioritize the tasks they are not looking forward to first (e.g. monthly returns, progress reports), because it gets them out of the way, and provides motivation to get on with the more enjoyable aspects.

Also, the more you manage to complete those boring jobs, the easier it will be to do them in future because you’ve made a habit of them.

Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Help

It’s easy to waste time trying to hunt down information yourself, when it would be quicker and more efficient to ask somebody who already knows.

Procrastinators will call this time “research”, knowing full well that they are only putting off doing the actual work instead.

But if you ask somebody else for the necessary information when you get stuck, you no longer have that excuse – you have what you need to get on with your actual work.

Seize The Day

People put off all sorts of things they want to do (e.g. travel), telling themselves they’ll do it later.

The problem is, you may not be in a position to travel later on in life – maybe you will no longer be healthy, maybe your partner will have predeceased you.

I’m not a believer in having regrets in life, but one of the things I am positively glad I did was travel the world when I was younger. Not only did I get to visit places I’d wanted to see, and not miss out by leaving it too late and no longer being able to make those trips, but I have also had the benefit of those experiences to draw on in all the years between then and now.

Thinking you’ll be able to do things you want to do later is a dangerous assumption to make. If something is important to you, make plans accordingly and do it as soon as you are able.

Put A Cost On Your Time

Many people do not seem to value time – their own or that of others.

We all only have the same number of hours in a day, but procrastinating eats into that time, and there is a cost to that, as I said above.

It might be difficult, but try to put a cost on your time. At work, you may already know your hourly rate, for example, but if you’re self-employed, or your procrastination affects your personal life, it could be harder.

However, when you can put a cost on your time, you can then calculate a tangible cost to your procrastination – an hour spent scrolling through your newsfeed on Facebook is costing you (or the company you work for) a specific amount of money, for example.

And if you keep track of this over time, you’ll find that this cost adds up – pretty quickly in some cases.

Write Down What You Want Out Of Life

Once you identify (and write down) your goals, you’ll be better able to decide whether procrastinating is a good choice or not. (Hint – it rarely is.)

You can then assess whether what you are doing is moving you toward those goals, or away from them.

And in most cases, putting off things that need to be done is going to move you away.

Don’t Overschedule Your Time

Trying to fit too many things into your calendar is going to lead to having to put some things off until later, wasting your time and others’ (e.g. having to spend effort rescheduling, annoying people who had made plans to fit in with yours).

It’s always going to be easier to make use of spare time (e.g. catching up on a bit of reading because you have a few minutes before the next appointment) than trying to juggle too many commitments, always in a rush to get to the next one on time.

Conclusion

Although procrastinators rarely think this way, delaying what needs to be done has a cost – sometimes it’s real money out of your pocket, sometimes it’s a lost opportunity, sometimes it’s how it makes you feel (e.g. bad, guilty), and sometimes it’s how others feel about your inaction.

Whatever that cost, dealing with your procrastinatory habits can save you time, money, and even relationships.

You need to find your own motivation – what is it costing you and how important is it that you avoid those costs in future.

Anyway, I hope you find some of the above tips useful.

Additional Resources

These are suggestions for those who wish to delve deeper into any of the above:

1. Affirmation Software
2. Mind Movies
3. Task Manager Software