To stop procrastinating, the most important thing of all is to know yourself. Detect the habits that prevent you from marking tasks as done, and pay attention to your daily routine, to better understand the causes for which you unconsciously procrastinate, and thus be able to put the appropriate remedy.
Contact people who motivate you, they can be friends, family, your partner, a professional, go to talks, motivational conferences. Share your objectives, remember that they must be realistic, check if they are fine as they are, or if, on the contrary, they need a more realistic readjustment. If your goals change, don’t worry, you may be discovering more about yourself, this is part of your personal growth.
- Find times and places away from distractions at least two or three times a day.
- Excuses get you nowhere. Consistently make small daily improvements. These habits will give you amazing results in the long run.
- All change is hard at the beginning, messy in the middle, and wonderful at the end. Remember that everything that now seems easy to you seemed difficult at first, the important thing is to practice daily. An average of 3 weeks is what it takes to implant a new habit, persevere!
- Perfection doesn’t exist, and neither does “the perfect moment”, so don’t wait until it arrives to start a complicated or new task. If you wait, you risk it being too late when you decide to get down to it. Don’t put off tasks unnecessarily.
- Think positive. Replace denial messages with others that motivate and lead you to action.
- Be flexible. Planning is important, but you must be flexible. Rigid plans contribute to procrastination because they cause a feeling of saturation. Do not let your schedule overwhelm you and reserve moments to relax.
- Just do it! Start as soon as possible to do what you are thinking about and do not do. The difficult thing is to get to it, because the obstacle is in our attitude. Make a list of tasks that you will complete and commit to fulfilling it.
- Reward yourself when you manage to complete your assigned tasks, but don’t feel guilty when you don’t. Much of the reasons why you procrastinate are in your mind, learning to forgive yourself is very important to keep improving.
Tricks such as setting alarms on your mobile, writing down important things in your agenda or calendar, creating a weekly schedule, or using a virtual platform, such as (Forest, Toggl, Rescue Time, Freedom, Offtime, Quality Time, Time Tune, Trello, Remember the Milk, Focus Booster App) among others.
Fondly,
Rosa Herrera
