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.
Get Rid Of Procrastination Once And For All - To learn more about this author, visit Andrew Rondeau's Website.
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Andrew Rondeau
(Visit Andrew's Website)
Andrew Rondeau transformed himself from a
$4 an-hour petrol-pump attendant to a
highly successful Senior Manager earning
$500k every year. Discover how you can
remove your fear and reduce your stress of
being a manager by receiving Andrew's free
Management e-Course and report: ww
w.greatmanagement.org/
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