How to manage procrastination and be productive? Here are 7 easy ways to manage procrastination and be productive!
Procrastination is a habit that kills productivity, creates anxiety and friction among team members.
You can not entirely stop yourself from procrastinating. But you can minimize it by discovering why your mind is dithering away from time to time.
The best way to manage procrastination and be productive is to discuss the matter with someone who can help. But before that, you need introspection about what is possibly wrong?
4 signs that you cannot manage procrastination and are getting less productive:
How can you spot procrastination? There are several signs, and if you notice those in yourself, you need to start corrective measures immediately.
Recently have you noticed too many people, maybe your friends and colleagues or relatives are complaining that you are somewhere lost and not active socially, or not meeting your deadlines of projects? Are they anxious, baffled or depressed with your behavior?
If something is happening so frequently, look for these 4 warning signs about procrastination:
- Are you giving too many excuses at work?
- Are you taking frequent brakes and indulging in nonworking activities like web surfing, chatting, and snacks or smoke breaks at the office?
- When your boss knocks you for any of your projects you are slower in response?
- When you are given any work to do or some urgent project crops up – your mood swiftly changes from positive to negative?
If you are suffering from these 4 signs surely you are unable to manage your procrastination and becoming less productive day by day.
For understanding how procrastination kills your productivity you can read this blog Do Procrastination effects employees’ productivity! 3 reasons how?
But don’t worry. At times even minor episodes of procrastination can make us feel guilty or ashamed. An article by Mindtools, How to Stop Procrastinating writes:
It (procrastination) can lead to reduced productivity and cause us to miss out on achieving our goals.
If we procrastinate over a long period of time, we can become demotivated and disillusioned with our work, which can lead to depression and even job loss, in extreme cases.
As I have earlier told, Procrastination is a habit, so you probably wouldn’t be able to break it overnight. But with genuine effort in a phased manner, you can manage procrastination and be productive.
Here are 7 ways how to manage procrastination and be productive:
1. Focus on self-introspection:
Concentrate on the “why” part first! Ask yourself why are you putting off a few particular tasks every day? What is the real reason behind it?
Keeping a journal will help you in a great way to find out the root cause of procrastination. Our mind is a powerful tool, and if your lifestyle is not a balanced one, your mind becomes your master.
Often our mind gets cluttered in achieving short-term pleasures, rather than facing hardships to achieve long-term goals.
Keeping a daily journal is a great way to de-clutter your focus. A vision board may get your focus back in your work and turbo-charge your motivation to excel.
2. Jump at work:
The first 10-30 seconds of thought process is very important. Your mind will try hard to start procrastinating. But don’t let it do that.
Jump at your work, and if you can avoid getting distracted for at least for the first 2-5 minutes, you have won the battle.
Once you are into the project, you have cut half of the chances to disrupt it in middle.
3. Chunk your Job:
When a task seems overbearing, procrastination often follows. So, in this situation, you should break that task into smaller, more manageable parts.
Projects that you don’t like can be overwhelming. So take 2-3 minutes and outline all the things you need to do to get started. And put the outline on the calendar, with timelines and checkboxes.
This will help you to find out how to manage procrastination and be productive at work.
4. Avoid perfectionism:
Lindsey Perkins Wade quotes Psychologist and author Tamar Chansky :
“Strive to do excellent work, not perfect work. It’s not about lowering your standards, it’s about lowering the very unrealistic stakes that you’ve constructed in your mind of what it means to fall short of the non-existent construct of perfection.”
So much so of the perfectionism! So next time you get a task and start wasting your valuable time in making non-important aspects perfect, concentrate on the bigger parts of the job and make them just right.
5. Give deadlines to all your works:
Commit to a self-imposed deadline to all the tasks in your hand to avoid procrastination and be productive. This is the best way to manage deadlines.
Instead of setting vague goals that you can push back at ease, start scheduling important tasks for non-negotiable windows of time, and be realistic in setting the time limits.
6. Eliminate things that distract you easily:
No, distractions won’t put you in a procrastinating mode. Rater the habit of procrastination looks for distractions to get you indulged upon to kill your time silently.
Eliminating anything that might tempt you, imposing restrictions on yourself to ensure that accessing these diversions is next to impossible,- will help you focus on work and be productive.
7. Occasionally change the order of your tasks in hand:
Don’t waste your time on something or a part of any task that you are finding to complete for the time being.
This process is like answering math’s exam paper. You have limited time, and when you are unable to solve a particular problem, better try to solve the ones which you can at first.
I will give you one practical example. Suppose in a day you have to write 2 blogs, create a video, create a couple of image works as a content executive in a digital marketing company. And you are having problems with conceptualizing the video or write the first blog.
You should better try to write the next blog or create the image works at first and then go back to the works you were struggling at first.
This way you know how to manage procrastination and be productive.
Sayak takes care of both recruitments and assessment projects of The HR Monks team. He loves helping people finding their dream job.
He started his journey in career leaving the shores of Waiting for Godot and found The HR Monks a better place, where he can change the lives of people by helping them achieve their dreams.
He has been to quite a fewer place across India and loves to travel. He loves two books, in particular, one Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and the other The Shift by Dr. Wayne Dyer.