Andrew Rondeau

Andrew is the owner of this website and has been a Leader, Manager, Coach and Consultant for the last twenty-five years.

Get Rid Of Procrastination Once And For All

By Andrew Rondeau
Published 02/15/2008

Everyone suffers from procrastination at some stage in their lives.

Fear of failure, pain, loss and on some occasions success, causes our paralysis and therefore our procrastination! Our fear becomes our reality.

Fear is “False Evidence Appearing Real”. To overcome our fear, we need to challenge it. We need to remember that our imaginations are very strong and can completely blow our fears out of proportion and thus stop us tackling them. Also, 90% of our fears never become reality, so if we remember this and be strong, we can tackle anything.

Common problems that people have fear of tackling are:

Reaching their Goals

The best way to reach your goals is to set yourself a target. Give yourself rewards for taking positive action and penalise yourself for any procrastination. Make sure you set yourself time limits by which to achieve each goal and if the goals are too big, break them down so they are easier to handle. Remember, reward yourself for positive action and penalise yourself for negative procrastination.

Breaking old Habits

It takes around a month to establish new habits, breaking down old ones and needs a lot of discipline is needed too. A good way to tackle this is to record your daily actions, keeping track of and reminding yourself of your new ways. Make sure you keep these records in clear view, so you can’t forget them.

Keeping Plans and Priorities

Make sure you keep a “To Do” List. Ensure this list includes all types of jobs, both those that can be done quickly and those that will take longer to achieve. Once you have listed all of these you need to allocate importance to the jobs, ie
Important/Urgent, Important/Not Urgent, Not Urgent or Important. By doing this you can then tackle the Important and Urgent jobs first, which are usually amount to only 20% of the jobs. You then need to learn to exclude the 80% of activities that don’t help you reach your goals altogether.

Tackling the Important and Urgent Jobs Last (at the last minute)

The best way to conquer this problem is to set aside a period of time each day to work on these jobs. You will then find you have the time not only to finish the jobs, but to do any amendments necessary long before they become due.

Contemplating Decisions (time always runs out)

You need to make sure you schedule time for making these decisions, so you don’t rush into having to make them in the heat of the moment and therefore make mistakes. If necessary, go somewhere where you can relax by doing something like exercising or listening to music.

You feel overwhelmed

Many people take advantage of you, getting you to work on their jobs and help them with activities that don’t help you with your goals. You have to learn to say “no” to these people, therefore being able to spend more time working for yourself and towards your own goals.

Failing to have a Master Plan

A good idea to obtain all your goals, is to have a Master Plan of these goals that you want to obtain for a year, giving priorities and dates by wish you wish to complete these goals. Make sure you have a Plan which is easy to change, as you will probably need to add and maybe take off certain goals throughout the year.

Use a diary, organiser or planner to keep goals coordinated

Make sure you use one of the above to coordinate with your Master Plan, transferring every task to the correct date. As you complete each job, cross it out from your organiser and at the end of each day every job not completed needs to be rescheduled. If you have to reschedule a job twice you know you are procrastinating. Delete any job that is not a big issue if you don’t complete it.

You have perfection paralysis

Some people judge themselves too harshly, often according to their accomplishments. If this is the case, you need to realise that it is often worth doing something wrong until you get it right. You need to learn to trust your intuition (your first one is usually the correct one) and follow your hunches. Try and make your quick decisions in 20 seconds or less.

Therefore, we can learn from these ideas above, how to form positive new habits and end the habit we have learnt of procrastinating and therefore not hold ourselves back anymore.

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2 Responses to "Get Rid Of Procrastination Once And For All"

ananga

said this on 02 Mar 2008 1:43:11 PM EST

Thank your for submitting this post to the Living by Design Blog Carnival - it has been featured in carnival edition No. 22

Ananga

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Doug Rosbury

said this on 23 Mar 2008 11:00:51 AM EST

OK, I'm sure that your ideas work, however, Are the results really in
your best interest? Procrastination, in my opinion, is a natural human sense that perhaps the course you are following may not necessarily
the one to lead you to what is your best calling. I say, follow your passion. what leads you to procrastinate may be an intuitive signal
to stop and take notice of what you are doing. When you feel passion about something, that then is what will bring you the greatest enjoyment and you wont be going down the wrong road and ending up asking yourself,"why me?" This is the way to happiness without having to deal with the nagging feeling that something is wrong. Nez Pa? Merci boquet ---Doug Rosbury

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