Tips On How To Overcome Procrastination

Procrastination has at some time or the other gotten the better of you whoever you are and whatever your profession and status in society is.

The need to stop procrastination will arise only when you begin to notice tasks piling up by the dozens, and over a period of time too.

I certainly do know something of this as I too have for decades been an honorary guest of this wonderful phenomenon called procrastination!

Decades?

You heard me right the first time!

Well, wanna know more? Nah! Too embarrassing to talk about! However, I shall relate to you just one incident, just one of many in my very own life!

It goes like this. Well, in the early seventies I used to buy books from a local book store with the pocket money my mother used to give me. I save up for a whole week and then make my way on Friday afternoon to the bookstore, spend some time there and then make a couple of purchases.

Believe me, most of these books have, from the day of purchase never been touched by human hand.

Examining them closely would more likely reveal only the fingerprint of the cashier at the bookstore who turns it around to look at the price tag before receiving payment.

Bar-codes did not exist at that time. Even if it did, it would have been expensive to operate and would not have been profitable to incorporate such technology into small businesses.

I had a great craze for retaining the newness of things. This applied to books too. I never wanted to open a book wide, lest a line forms on the spine of the book. Crazy? ... Me? ... Well ... good observation!

That was one reason that I put them away for the right time and the right sequence to align. Wanting to do things in the right sequence is one of the main reasons for my procrastination.

On my part procrastination had not been an issue and there had not been any urgency to beat procrastination, but instead to stick to a sequence.

My motto was, complete one task first, then go for the other. In order to finish one, you need to start one, right? This is exactly where I had been failing.

Another reason for putting away these books was, I wanted them out of the grasp of my oldest brother. He being eighteen years senior to me, would simply grab them from me and rush to his bed.

There he would open the book wide and turn the front sleeve around to fit in with the rear sleeve so that he could simply use one hand to hold it before his eyeballs.

So very convenient indeed. Now, within just a couple of minutes he would be snoring away like hell's furnace on steroids. The book would be on the ground, face down, very close to an unextinguished cigarette and a toppled ash tray!

The spine of the book would have white lines on it indicating the pages at which the book had been flipped. I had devised many methods of repairing such damages. However I thought the best thing to do was to "put them away" safely in some place where they would escape getting into his line of vision during one of his frantic ranshacks.

To this day I have a large collection of books on various topics that had interested me and a good number of them are, I would say still untouched from the time of purchase.

This, mind you, is one mere example in my life! I don't think that YOU the reader would be able to find a better example of procrastination in your life!

Well, with such a track record you may now ask the question if I am qualified to write on the topic of procrastination. Good question! However, I feel it is better to have lost first and then to have figured out a way to win. Thus, I assure you I am!

Up to now I have been talking about the results of my procrastination and some of the factors that had caused it. I have not yet started on how you could get over it!

In my case the benefits I have accrued are, I am the proud owner of hundreds of brand new books on dozens of topics as a result of my procrastination!

Another point worthy of mention is, the more you procrastinate, the more you have time to figure out how best to perform a particular task. There could be other benefits too.

Getting back to the topic, I would like to announce that I have in mind some plans on how to stop procrastinating once and for all and how to conquer it completely. I would like to discuss them with you too. If you are interested, well and good. Please read on!

First of all I intend checking out all what needs to be done relating to what has been planned by me for the last few years and never attempted even once. I intend listing them in the order in which it comes to my mind. Once I think I have a complete list, my next step would be to prioritize each of these tasks and rewrite the list in that order.

Then I would re-examine this list and write it once more in a different order, easiest of tasks first and the most difficult of them at the very end.

Now, I have two lists. The first contains my tasks in the order of priority. The second contains a list of tasks in increasing degree of difficulty in accomplishing.

Which list should I select? Well, I would select the list which contains the tasks in increasing order of difficulty. What do I do with the other? Trash it! Then why do you think I spoke of two lists? You see, I thought of YOU as well! If you too would like to follow the same plan that I intend following, then the choice between the two lists is all yours. See?

Now I grab a notebook and write down each of the tasks on my lists as the header, devoting one full page for each task. Then I intend writing down the sequence and method in which I should accomplish each of them, which would be a step by step plan from the beginning of each task to the very end. This would be a list of sub-tasks.

Whichever list I select, all I need to do is check out the sequence of the sub tasks and simply follow them.

Of course you need to sacrifice some thing for this. Time and your effort. You need at least half an hour each day towards this mission. The time at which you perform your tasks should match the task too.

For example if you had planned to adjust the reflector of your solar panel, you need to do it while the sun is up, and thus you need to select a Saturday, a Sunday or some national holiday.

Each and every task on your list would have a time of the day or day of the week that is most suitable for it. The exception being a task like clearing clutter or polishing your trophies. These could be done anytime and on any day.

Observing this formula and accomplishing one task a day would, with every task accomplished, draw you nearer to your main target, that is to scream "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!"

Then ... as time goes by ... little by little ... you will find that you are ticking off tasks from your list, starting of course from your sub-list, and before you know it, you would have accomplished everything on the list!

Finished! ... Accomplished! ... Completed! ... What a great relief! You have conquered procrastination by grabbing it by the horns and flinging it to hell! ... Congratulations!

From now on, you could either stop planning or continue to plan and then when your list gets a little populated, rinse and repeat what you've done.

So, thats it! That's the way I intend doing it! If you think my system is good enough for you, go ahead and follow it. You could tweak it up here and there to suit your style and convenience. However, the most important thing is to take a firm decision that you will begin somewhere. Then get set to accomplish that very important first step ... writing a list.

Take a break now and get cracking on that list tomorrow!

... concluded