Everyone procrastinates. Even the most successful people struggle with
it every day. But successful people do something that most of us don't
-- they push past it. They don’t make excuses or allow it to affect
their output. They come up with smart, actionable strategies to break
past mental barriers and stay productive.
Here are seven ways successful people defeat procrastination.
1. They keep themselves accountable.
Show
yourself commitment to getting things done. Making a commitment to
yourself helps keep you accountable. You can do this by writing your
goals down, keeping a to-do list with you, and creating reminders in
your phone and on your calendar.There are other more creative things you can do to keep yourself
accountable: Change the wallpaper on your phone or computer to something
that says “get work done”. Write your tasks and goals on a whiteboard
or large sticky you keep on your monitor.
2. They make themselves accountable to others.
If you can’t stay accountable to yourself, you might have more success staying accountable to other people.
Tell
everyone what you plan to do and talk about your goals. Tell friends,
employees and employers your intentions and you won’t want to let them
down. For example, if you want to go to the gym every day, ask a friend
to text you every evening asking “did you go to the gym today?”
Another
suggestion is to start documenting and sharing your journey. A blog or
vlog where you share the projects you’re working on and your progress
will encourage you to get things done. Allowing yourself to be under
public scrutiny can help light a fire under you.
3. They tie themselves to the mast.
In
Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus has his ship’s crew tie him to the mast so
that he could hear the Sirens’ song without being drawn in and tempted
to jump into the sea. If you’re a chronic procrastinator and simply
can’t resist the temptations of things like Facebook and Youtube, it
might be time to tie yourself to the mast.
There are online tools that you can use
that will temporarily block access to distracting websites like
Facebook so you can work on the things that matter. It’s an extreme
measure but also very effective.
4. They have self awareness.
Self-awareness
is a common trait many successful people have. Having self-awareness
allows you to properly understand why you’re even procrastinating in the
first place.
Once you understand why you’re procrastinating, it
will be easier for you to form a plan to beat it. This will allow you to
see the root cause of your procrastination, which you can then either
solve the problem or formulate a strategy to overcome it.
Becoming
aware of why you procrastinate means taking a step back and looking at
some of the possible reasons such as boredom, lack of confidence in the
project, lack of self-confidence, and feeling overwhelmed. Once you know
the reason, it’s a matter of finding things to remedy it and cut your
procrastination off at the source.
5. They plan ahead.
How
often do you, at the start of your work day, sit at your desk and begin
looking for things to work on, only to wind up on Reddit or checking
email?
If you get to your work desk and have no idea where to
start, it can lead you to work on low-impact tasks (such as checking
email) or other worse forms of procrastinating.
Those without a map, wander. Put together a plan or to-do list before starting work or any project.
The
night before is a good time to do this. It allows you to reflect on
what you’ve accomplished during the day and then come up with what needs
to get done tomorrow. Now, when you start your work day, you know
exactly what you need to work on and what’s the highest priority.
6. They commit to at least showing up.
After starting a task, you’ll likely stick with it a lot longer than you initially committed to.
It’s like working out. Half the battle is just showing up to the gym.
Commit
to just showing up and you’ll find yourself completing a lot more
tasks. The next time you don’t feel like tackling a task, commit to only
working on it for one minute. Set a timer for 60 seconds, then sit down
and get to work. More often than not, you’ll find yourself wanting to
go beyond the 60 seconds and continue.
I constantly use this technique to trick myself into working on tedious tasks.
7. They break up large tasks into smaller tasks.
The
classic but seldom-followed productivity advice to conquering large or
overwhelming tasks is to break them up into smaller chunks. Successful
people understand that tasks need to be broken down into much more
specific and measurable sub-tasks.
For example, an overwhelming
to-do list item might be “write book.” Does that item in my to-do list
mean I need to write the entire book today, or does only writing one
sentence count towards the completion of the task?
A better
approach would be to set a goal of writing a specific number or words
each day, or spend a certain amount of time researching.
“Write
1000 words” or “spend 30 minutes researching examples of productive CEOs
for book” are much more specific tasks, and therefore easier to tackle.
This often encourages me to get more done and feel accomplished and
motivated by scratching to-do items off of my list.
Written by Corey Ferreira
twitter.com/coreyvf,www.facebook.com/coreyvferreira
Corey Ferreira is a business school graduate and a passionate, ambitious
entrepreneur. Since 2008, Corey has launched, grown, and sold several
businesses including an emerging advertising media company and a web
design agency. Corey is currently a part of Shopify's marketing team,
helping make commerce better for everyone.
