Procrastination is the silent killer of productivity, the thief of time, and the enemy of progress. It means to keep putting things off until the last moment you feel overwhelmed and stressed to carry out the assignment. Procrastination does not care about social hierarchy or annual salary. Everyone struggles with it, including you. There are days we feel like putting off tasks until the next convenient or available time. If you are a chronic or partial procrastinator, procrastination leads mostly to laziness and underutilized skills. If you want to work on procrastinating, this article is here to help you.
If you want to know how to improve yourself in 2023, read till the end and enjoy a bonus tip.
Here Are the 15 Real Ways to Stop Being Lazy
Set Specific Goals
This is the first step in dealing with procrastination. When your goals are set, they could be daily, weekly, or something longer; you can easily set a time frame to accomplish each goal.
Chunk It
Once your specific goals are set, the rush comes in, so many things to get done, and so little time, you will never see the end to this. You are tired already, and that is your mind overreacting to keep you from trying to do anything. At this point, you need to fight back. Rather than feeling overwhelmed by an enormous task, break it into bits. If a task does not have a quick time frame for completion, you can start doing it in bits within a short or long time frame before the deadline. By doing so, you would have completed it on or before the deadline.
Eliminate Distractions
To be effective, you need to eliminate all forms of distractions in your working environment. For example, close all unnecessary tabs on your internet browser, put your phone on silent, switch off your music player, and keep yourself away from children’s noise if you have kids. Then, sit alone in a quiet place and set to work. Staying away from distractions helps you work with a focused mind effectively and help to have quality and balanced results.
Take A Break From Work At Intervals
Taking breaks at intervals after a long time at work is crucial to dealing with ending procrastination. Working for a long time without a break leads to less productivity and diminishing focus. You can walk around, take some snacks or a cup of coffee, play games, listen to music, and do other things that can help your body relax. When you take a short break from work, your brain will refresh, your mind will be more focused, and your productivity and creativity will soar.
Reward Yourself
Setting up a reward system for yourself is one of the great ways to celebrate small wins and accomplishments. When you reward yourself, you encourage yourself to do more and better next time. Also, you give yourself something to look forward to as motivation. You can go out to have fun, eat, drink, buy gifts for yourself, and many other things that can help to celebrate yourself. It is only sometimes you should be by your desk and overwork. Sometimes, you need to reward yourself for your hard work, dedication, strengths, and how much you have put into your wins.
Use A Timer
A timer is one of the best ways to stop laziness and procrastination. You can use a calendar, watch, days, weeks, and more to calculate your time. This helps speed up your work process and gives you time to think, plan, and execute your task well. It also helps to keep track of how far you are far gone and helps in giving the best outcome.
Always Have A Positive Self-Talk
A bit of self-talk takes you a long way. After all, the most conversation you have in a day is with yourself, right in your heart and your head, so why not use it to kick yourself? Change your inner dialogue and use positive affirmations to motivate yourself. For instance, instead of saying, ” I can’t do this”, or “I can’t finish this task at this time “, tell yourself that ” I can do this” and I can finish this task”. When you always learn to say positive things, your level of motivation will increase, your fear will go away, and you will discover that you have more potential than you think.
Eliminate Perfectionism
One hundred per cent perfection does not exist anywhere, and “done is always better than perfect”. It does not mean you should do things anyhow, but that you should do your best in any task. So instead of striving for perfection, focus on progress and doing your best. Striving for perfection will end up fixing you at a point or make you stagnate for a long time. Perfection comes when you keep doing something and striving to know more about it.
Prioritize Your Tasks
You must prioritize your task to do the right thing at the right time. For instance, you have a meeting or shopping, and you must take your kids from school. You first need to check through the time needed for each task and arrange them according to their order of priority. When you have done that, start attending to them based on that. However, ensure that one affects the other to avoid putting yourself under unnecessary pressure. Your priority list can be set either the night before or early in the morning of each day. This will help you make the best use of your day.
Find Accountability
Sharing your goals and progress with someone else is important in holding yourself accountable. Having someone who can support and encourage you helps you stay on track and be willing to do more. You can find external support and evaluation by asking someone to check on you regularly and keep reminding you of what you need to do. Having an accountability partner or self-accountability will help to motivate and encourage you even when tasks seem too difficult to achieve.
Use The Pomodoro Technique
The Pomodoro technique is a time management method that can help you work in short, focused bursts. It involves working for 25 minutes, taking a five minutes break, and then repeating the circle. You can set your timer to get this done, and as a result, you will work in short time-focused bursts. It keeps you from fatigue or burning out your energy during long work hours.
Find Your Ideal Working Hours
One of the 15 real ways to stop being lazy is to find your ideal working hours. Discovering your ideal working hours in a day helps you to perform at your best. However, this has to do primarily with remote workers. People who work under physical bosses can not choose when to go to work or leave work. However, they can decide how best to handle each task without overburdening themselves. If you do remote jobs or you have your job, discovering your ideal working hours helps you a lot. By adopting this technique, you can plan your work to fit your time without overlapping other duties. For example, if you enjoy working at night, you can shift most of those important tasks to nighttime when there would be no distractions, especially if you are unmarried. On the other hand, if you love it during the day, you can get them done very early before the sun sets in. With this, you can take advantage of your peak productivity hours and complete more tasks.
Learn To Say No
If you are always fond of “I will do it”, this point is for you. One of the key steps in ending procrastination is learning to say no to unnecessary tasks and commitments. When you take too much at a time, you are on your way to becoming overwhelmed and overstressed, which can lead to procrastination. Therefore, you can prioritize your time and focus on essential things by learning to say no. In addition, it makes you more responsible and accountable for how you manage your time and resources.
Practice Mindfulness
Take some time in a day to practice mindfulness and focus on the present moment. For instance, please take a few deep breaths and concentrate on the sensation of your breath, how it leaves and enters your body, and let go of any distracting thoughts.
Be Organized
Keeping your work area well organized is motivation alone. If your table, room, office, and other areas are completely a mess, your brain will feel too tired to set to work in such an unorganized and untidy environment. If your papers, tools, files, documents on the system, and other working tools are well organized, your mind will get connected immediately. A well-organized work area helps to increase productivity and stress-free moments at work.
BONUS
Deal With Natural Tendencies Of Sluggishness
Some people need to be more active when deciding or setting out on a task. If you see these lapses in your habit, it is best to start working on them as soon as possible because it will not only retard your growth in life, it will make you lose many opportunities no matter how competent you are. For instance, someone gives you a task to complete within a stipulated time, and you keep delaying it unnecessarily. No matter how good it turns out to be after delivery, you might end up losing such a person, especially if the person is the type that values time management and competency. The way to remove procrastination for good is to learn how to live with it. There is no magic to cure it, but deliberate intentions do.
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Recommended books for further reading:
- Positive intelligence by Shirzad Chimene
- Mindset – Updated Edition: Changing The Way You think To Fulfil Your Potential
- The Miracle Morning: The 6 Habits That Will Transform Your Life Before 8AM
- The Self Confidence Workbook: A Guide to Overcoming Self-Doubt and Improving Self-Esteem
- Atomic Habits: The life-changing
Great tips for fighting procrastination 🙌