Fight Against Procrastination
How many of you take a quick shuffle between work windows and facebook window or youtube? With clock ticking and deadlines approaching, you know you have only few hours to complete the assignment but prefers to check your emails first. If that’s your story, you fall into the category about the people we are going to talk about today. The Procrastinators. Procrastination is the tendency of postponing important tasks while giving priority to unimportant pleasurable tasks.
According to psychologist Clarry Lay, Procrastination occurs when there is significant time period between people intended to do a job and when they do it.
If define in a word, it can also be called a habit… A disastrous habit, that ruin your efficiency on both personal and professional front. Some people call it ability of working best under pressure, but very few knows that it may lead to health problem as well. Yes, procrastination can have direct and indirect effects on your health. Stress, anxiety, panic attacks, lowering blood sugar level and hypotension are few outcomes of lingering your important tasks to deadlines. In many cases, it has been seen that depression is one major effect, which becomes very difficult to deal. And in worse scenarios, it could be cardiovascular diseases.
How to battle with it
In the mankind, this could be the most difficult war to fight… because it’s your war with yourself. We all are possessor of brain that is capable of commanding our body, responding and reacting. This brain has tendency to act rationally. In procrastinators, this brain is dominated by another feeling called gratification. There is a constant poking from gratification when your brain tries to indulge in urgent tasks which leads to delays. And guess, who comes to the rescue there? Yes, it’s you will power. However, there are many successful theories for combating procrastination, but you have to be mentally very very strong to curb this habit. Here I am going to share some quick tips for conquering procrastination. If follow religiously, they may help you a lot in abandoning this habit.
Chop off your task into smaller parts
It’s always good to break your assignment into modules that you can work upon separately. This would help you taking short breaks and not working long hours in a stretch. Also, you will have a sense of accomplishment after completing every module. For better productivity start off with the easier part first and increasing the complexity.
Disperse the distractions
When you start working, there are many things that will start calling you. This could be your coffee, a lawn tennis match going on television, a short nap, your social networking account, a friend with whom you have lost touch years ago. At your workplace, you can ask your network admin to block websites that pokes you for unnecessary visits. When you sit down to work at home, you must assure that you are sitting far away from all the things that divert your attention.
Treat yourself
Every time you achieve your goal, treat yourself with a banana split or may be a hot fudge or the thing that you like. Yes, this is more like bribing yourself, but it is harmless. If positives aren’t working, punish yourself. Keep yourself away from movies till your task is done, procrastinate reading the book you just bought unless you complete the assignment. If goods are not doing good for you, introduce the bads to motivate.
Get an accomplice stalk you
Stalking is something which everyone is afraid of. Ask your best friend, a co-worker or a close relative to stalk your work. To save yourself from embarrassment of being a loser at work, just complete your jobs before anyone inquire about them.
One step towards organization
Introducing a bit of organization in your environment and in your your behaviour would help you a lot in remaining focused. So clean up the mess around you and clean up your ‘task to do’ list. Concentrating on one thing at a time will enable you less shuffling between tasks and hence more productivity.
It is very important for you to understand that for the sake of gratification of few minutes or may be few hours you are staking your career at risk. With efficient time management you can squeeze out some good joy time for yourself as well as ample amount of productive time. All you need to do is learn time management and please trust me, time management is not a rocket science.
