Procrastination: and Three Ways to Move Past it to Success.
Procrastination: and Three Ways to Move Past it to Success.
Some important tasks are also urgent; your house will burn down if you don't do it. Bills need to get paid and deadlines need to be met.
Others are not important but can feel urgent; certain meetings and e-mails. However, the tasks that we procrastinate are not urgent but are greatly important.
When an important task doesn't seem to have that urgent feeling, it is easy to put it off and put it off, until it can become an unpleasant task that you feel guilty about whenever it comes to mind. Sound familiar?
Here are some of the "real" reasons why people procrastinate doing the important, but not urgent tasks.
Brings up fear.
- Don't know how to do it feeling.
- Makes me feel uncomfortable.
- Afraid of making a bad decision.
- Makes me have to look at stuff I don't like.
- Shame
- Not fun.
- More of your own...
We all have the ability to drop into thinking error mode when confronted with the above list. One thinking error is called rationalizing. When you don't want to do something important, your mind will rationalize a million reasons why its ok to not do it. "I don't have time, I need to take a nap, these e-mails have to be read," are just a few. I am sure you can make a whole list of your favorites.
Stephen Covey calls this category, not urgent and not important. This is the place where procrastination thrives. It is where we waste the most energy doing stuff that is really useless and an energy drain.
Real recreation does not come into this category.
Taking a walk can very well be in the important category.
Exercise keeps you healthy and walking in the park is often dream time. Surfing the internet, watching TV, doodling are usually unimportant and doing those things keep you from doing what is most important.
What makes something so important anyway?
Here are a couple questions that can help you to make an
assessment of whether something you are avoiding is in fact,
important.
1. Does this task hold great significance and would it make a
crucial difference in your life plans?
2. Will it matter in the long run?
3. Will it effect pivotal future decisions?
4. Is it somehow related to your deep purpose, goals and dreams?
If you answered "yes" to any of those questions than your task is in the "important" category.
In summary, if you want to grow your business, sometimes goal-setting,visioning and doing strategic planning will bring up all kinds of self-doubts and fears, but it will also offer the most valuable place to put your energy.
For just one week do these three things.
1. Notice how many times you find yourself doing stuff that's a waste of your energy.
2. Be aware of your tendency to rationalize.
3. Transform that into fuel to do the important tasks that you have been avoiding.
You will be amazed at what happens!
Procrastination and Three Ways to Move Past it to Success - To learn more about this author, visit Kaya Singer's Website.
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We've all done it; put off something very important. Sometimes the more important the thing is, the more issues that come up around "just doing" it. It's so easy to find all kinds of things that feel more urgent and more important. But are they really more important?
Some important tasks are also urgent; your house will burn down if you don't do it. Bills need to get paid and deadlines need to be met.
Others are not important but can feel urgent; certain meetings and e-mails. However, the tasks that we procrastinate are not urgent but are greatly important.
When an important task doesn't seem to have that urgent feeling, it is easy to put it off and put it off, until it can become an unpleasant task that you feel guilty about whenever it comes to mind. Sound familiar?
Here are some of the "real" reasons why people procrastinate doing the important, but not urgent tasks.
Brings up fear.
- Don't know how to do it feeling.
- Makes me feel uncomfortable.
- Afraid of making a bad decision.
- Makes me have to look at stuff I don't like.
- Shame
- Not fun.
- More of your own...
We all have the ability to drop into thinking error mode when confronted with the above list. One thinking error is called rationalizing. When you don't want to do something important, your mind will rationalize a million reasons why its ok to not do it. "I don't have time, I need to take a nap, these e-mails have to be read," are just a few. I am sure you can make a whole list of your favorites.
Stephen Covey calls this category, not urgent and not important. This is the place where procrastination thrives. It is where we waste the most energy doing stuff that is really useless and an energy drain.
Real recreation does not come into this category.
Taking a walk can very well be in the important category.
Exercise keeps you healthy and walking in the park is often dream time. Surfing the internet, watching TV, doodling are usually unimportant and doing those things keep you from doing what is most important.
What makes something so important anyway?
Here are a couple questions that can help you to make an
assessment of whether something you are avoiding is in fact,
important.
1. Does this task hold great significance and would it make a
crucial difference in your life plans?
2. Will it matter in the long run?
3. Will it effect pivotal future decisions?
4. Is it somehow related to your deep purpose, goals and dreams?
If you answered "yes" to any of those questions than your task is in the "important" category.
In summary, if you want to grow your business, sometimes goal-setting,visioning and doing strategic planning will bring up all kinds of self-doubts and fears, but it will also offer the most valuable place to put your energy.
For just one week do these three things.
1. Notice how many times you find yourself doing stuff that's a waste of your energy.
2. Be aware of your tendency to rationalize.
3. Transform that into fuel to do the important tasks that you have been avoiding.
You will be amazed at what happens!
Procrastination and Three Ways to Move Past it to Success - To learn more about this author, visit Kaya Singer's Website.
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Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Joe DagerJoe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive coaching company providing no-nonsense direction in areas such as Lean Six Sigma Marketing and organized referral marketing. What others say: In the past 20 years, Joe and I have collaborated on many difficult issues. Joe’s ability to combine his expertise with “out of the box” thinking is unsurpassed. He has always delivered quickly, cost effectively and with ingenuity. A brilliant mind that is always a pleasure to work with.” - James R. If you want to learn more about Business901, start a conversation with us. We can be found @ Web/Blog: Business901.com Web/Blog: FundingYourNonprofit.com LinkedIn Profile Follow me on Twitter - Visit Joe Dager's Website |
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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