Howdy! Thanks for finally showing up now that your closets are arranged by season and hue, you’ve precisely inventoried the letters in a can of alphabet soup, and learned to play Chopsticks on the German lute. Now you’ve got work to do and have come to the right place.
Over a decade ago, I committed to working from home full-time, and man was it hard! I was excited to have 2-3 hours per day I had previously spent in the car to myself. Alas, I found I was filling that former commute time with “work”—quotes intentional—and had little time to live life.
I was a procrastinator—from the Latin pro, meaning forward, cras signifying tomorrow, and tinus, meaning irate spouse. I hated myself for wasting all that time, day after day. A deliberate lifestyle change for which I fought tooth and nail was now a source of self-loathing.
So I turned to self-help, reading books and articles like this one for solutions. They all had softer approaches like “learn how to prioritize” and “have realistic expectations.” I was surprised they didn’t tell me to eat more fiber, the apparent solution to everything else. Here’s the thing. Nothing worked.
Then, I fortunately came to a revelation. I was quite capable at my professional craft—project management—spending all day ensuring that my teams did exactly what was needed to the best of their abilities in the shortest possible time. What if I used those same techniques on myself? Bingo—it worked. As usual in life, what applies to the group applies to one.
Here are 5 proven actions. And I realize that this is a bit deliberate. They’re kind of a last resort. But I’d encourage you to try them as soon as you sense a tendency to delay, especially if you are putting off a life leap because enjoying your life is the most important thing. Write these down. And don’t edit yourself. Just write. Your first impressions are often spot on.
- Know your why – Don’t use sticks to motivate yourself to get started—and getting started is the most important thing. Use carrots. List 3 compelling benefits from finishing your task. Maybe a feeling of calm will come over you when you see a clean room or next week will be less stressful after your e-mail inbox is clean. Starting creates inertia, and that’s half the game.
- List your to-dos and to-don’ts – If you have a big, blobby project in your head, it will intimidate you, and you will have trouble getting out of the gates. But the actual quantity of work is often smaller and less daunting than we think. Seeing it on paper will drive that point home. List the things you absolutely have to produce for this task to be complete. For example, I will only write holiday cards to people with whom I’ve communicated over the past two years. If this list gets daunting, then slim down your goal and leave the rest for another time. Then list three things you will absolutely not do, and include the stuff you’ve been doing to procrastinate. For example, still today, my Netflix queue is the most pristinely organized entity in my life, so I’d write down that that was off limits.
- Know and plan for your limits – How much time of focused work can you invest in a sitting before running out of gas? It’s OK if you are a short-time person. I am, too. Just accept the reality, and commit to a daily work window, hopefully at the same time of day every day, or as close as possible. Habit is incredibly powerful when trying to get things done. You will feel less intimidated by the task since you have now broken it up in to manageable windows of time.
- Reward yourself regularly – Project teams have get-togethers and fun activities to reward the collective group for achieving milestones. It’s easy to dismiss these events as corporate dog and pony shows, but they’ve proven timeless. People need bookends to acknowledge completion. Otherwise, you could always go back and make it better or not finish because you have no incentive to do so. So write down how you will reward yourself when you are done.
Your 5th tip for kicking the procrastination habit is to be used if you are trying to finish the above steps and are still accumulating enough Amazon points from online shopping to buy a speed boat.
Write down 1) all the things you won’t be able to do tomorrow because you didn’t get your task done today and 2) all the things you did today to avoid your task – You’ll find you’re doing a lot of meaningless B.S. that is keeping you from the things in life about which you truly care. You will likely be shocked into action.
Did you maybe land here because you were actually in the process procrastinating? Well, gotcha! Getting any struggle on paper—organized or just stream of consciousness—leads your brain to a clearer path toward the way.
I look forward to seeing you on the other side of your achievement.
Glen Tibaldeo is a media personality, author, and Project Strategist/Change Management Consultant.
Bestseller Radical Sabbatical, by Laura Berger and Glen Tibaldeo is available on Amazon, kobo, Barnes and Noble, and at other major bookstores.
This article originally appeared on Psychology Today November 21, 2014.
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