Sometimes procrastination can be good. It can save us from getting involved in things that we don’t really need to get involved with.
But when it becomes our default mode, that’s not a good place to be.
The art of putting off what you should do today until tomorrow or next week or even next year (always assuming that you actually get round to doing it at all by that stage) pretty much means that you’ll never get anything worthwhile done.
So you stay stuck in a rut and look back over the previous years or decades and wonder what on earth you’ve been doing.
If that’s the case for you, what can you do about it?
Personally, I find the best way to stop procrastinating on something is to not even let myself start procrastinating.
Start whatever it is you’re likely to put off forever now. This minute. Not once you’ve had a chance to make up however many excuses you need about it.
When I do this, people think I’m efficient. I know I’m not – it’s because if I don’t start it now, it will stay on my to-do list until hell freezes over.
So, try that for yourself and find out whether it works for you as well as it does for me!
If that’s not good enough then the next trick is to at least start something, even if you don’t manage to finish it in one sitting.
The human mind likes things to be complete. That’s why things like jigsaws, crosswords and Sukodu are so compelling. We can’t leave them incomplete – we have to finish them!
So if there’s something that you’d normally ignore and procrastinate on, jot it down and then split it into its component parts. There might be a handful of these or they could turn into the length of an essay. It doesn’t much matter how many parts there are (apart from giving your mind another reason to not start!). The important thing is that you’ve got a list of individual items that are each manageable.
Then pick off at least one item per day.
It could be the smallest one first – that’s often the best place to start – or a slightly bigger item. Ideally something that won’t take more than 10 or 20 or 30 minutes of your time. However long you can take a break from everything else you just have to get done today without freaking out.
What this does is trigger your mind into realising that you’ve started on the project.
Once that’s happened, you’re on a roll as your mind will start to push you to complete this project that’s nagging it.
So you’ve got your subconscious and your conscious minds on board and things will start to happen. Usually sooner rather than later.
So you stay stuck in a rut and look back over the previous years or decades and wonder what on earth you’ve been doing.
