How To Overcome Procrastination

Procrastination is something we all struggle with from time to time. Now that we have extra time throughout the day, its easy to say, “I’ll do it later” instead of “I’ll do it now.” For anyone working from home, it’s easy to say, ” I’ll do it over the weekend” instead of allocating time at the end of the day. These are some ways that I overcome procrastination whenever I feel like I’m pushing everything off.

Schedule Your Day

I’ve talked about this in another post which you can read here. I don’t want you to think you need to schedule your day down the the very second. If that works for you, keep going with it. However, it’s healthy to leave some extra time for other things that may pop up during the day. The best solution would be to loosely schedule your day. Fill in the “must-do’s” first, then the “should-do’s”, then finally anything else that can fit in with the remaining time.

Do What You Don’t Enjoy First

Yes, you read that right. Do the things that are the hardest first so that they’re out of the way. I do this at work all the time. If I start my day with easy, mindless responsibilities, I never accomplish the hard things. This leads to pushing the hard things off to the next day. The hard tasks are done before lunch, and the easy ones after lunch. Of course, if there’s a deadline for something, that will take priority over my system, but it has helped me so far.

Another way to combat procrastination is to “reward” yourself for doing what you don’t want to do. This could be anything. For example, let’s say you want to start up a new blog but can’t stand the research, reading, and constant adjustments. Start by sitting and researching for 30 minutes and then take another 15-20 minutes to make any adjustments. After that, reward yourself by making some extra pins for Pinterest or start another post early.

Make It Exciting

Not everything that we push to the side needs to be a burden. Changing your mindset and turning the negative into a positive will change your overall outlook on getting that particular task done. Think of the hard tasks as a learning process and you will gain something out of it. If it’s something you don’t particularly enjoy, getting it done sooner will allow you to move on to what you love to do.

Overall, putting aside the things we don’t want to do for the things we want to will lead to never getting anything done. There will always be tasks, chores, assignments, etc., that we don’t want to do for whatever reason. However, finding ways to enjoy those hard things makes the day easier.

Leave a comment below with different ways you fight procrastination!