5 Tips to Overcome Procrastination

Do you have a very important task in hand but you don’t feel like doing it? You know the task is very significant for your life and needs your immediate attention but still you’re unable to start working on that task.

When you start putting off the seemingly ‘difficult’ tasks, for you find other chores that make you feel more comfortable, that’s when you start procrastinating.

Many people confuse procrastination with laziness. These two have entirely different meanings and effects on our life. A lazy person doesn’t like to work at all but a procrastinator does work but tries to stay away from the difficult or challenging tasks.

According to me, procrastination is a more serious problem than laziness. Because being lazy is your choice but being a procrastinator isn’t a choice. Procrastination is caused due to your inner feelings that make you feel de-motivated or scared. Procrastination is what forces you to be stuck in your comfort zone and hinders your over all development.

I would call myself to be one of the ‘masters’ of procrastinators. When I wanted to start a video blog, it took me more than a year to overcome procrastination. Even now, I deal with this seemingly ‘genetic’ flaw in my personality at regular times.

But as everyone knows, this personality flaw is more dangerous than it seems to be and it needs to be bade goodbye.

Here are my tips to overcome procrastination, which have been tested and verified!

1. Stop Dreaming: When I thought of starting a video blog, the idea gave me some amazing dreams – dreams that I become a very popular face on YouTube, dreams about me being featured in popular newspapers for being an awesome video blogger and many other related scenarios were what made me feel happy and inspired.

But just when I started thinking of the topic and content for my first video, procrastination came in. All the people who have tried their hand into blogging would know that running a ‘real’ blog isn’t an easy task and video blogging is one step ahead of conventional blogging.

Now when reality seemed a bit harsh, I preferred to keep dreaming. I dreamt about my success as a video blogger again and again but nothing ever happened.

Do you understand why I failed? Yes, because I didn’t try. Do you understand why I didn’t try? Not because I was scared to do it, but because I felt more comfortable while dreaming about my success instead of actually working for it.

So, do you know what’s the first step you need to take to overcome procrastination? Stop dreaming about working on your dream. START WORKING!

2. Stop ‘being forced’:  The biggest reason behind procrastination lies in your mind, which is controlled by you only. Tell me if it’s not!

Now, there’s one very common culture that people of my age follow. Ask them why did they fail? Maximum of them would answer –“I didn’t want to do it. I was forced to do it and hence I failed.”

If only you had trained yourself in a way that you tell your brain about what you want and what you don’t want, you would have never opted for the  ‘being forced’ excuse.

If only you had never opted for ‘being forced’ excuse, you would have never faced the problem of procrastination.

Stop repenting on what you had wanted and how things have not gone your ways; just do what you’re supposed to do now. Grow up! You’re not a child who has plenty of time to cry over the toy which mom didn’t buy for you. You have a lot to accomplish. START WORKING!

3. START WORKING: This is something which I shouldn’t have told you while discussing this topic but my friend, that’s what you really need to do. I know the task is very difficult and you don’t know how to do it or you simply don’t want to do it. And that’s why you’re procrastinating.

Try to break the task into several smaller tasks and pick up just one of them. All you need is to start and the ‘ghost’ of procrastination would be shooed away.

4. Use the one third rule: You may call it the effect of too much of The Big Bang Theory but this one does work.  Split your entire day into three parts – for one third day you should play, one third rest and then the other third time you should devote to your work. Once you get plenty of leisure time, you would want to work yourself, unless you’re also suffering through laziness ‘syndrome’.

5. Learn Time Management: Sometimes we do suffer from time management issues. When I have too many tasks to do and too less time, I prefer doing nothing and go to sleep. But this doesn’t work if you are supposed to deliver the project the next day or have an exam next day.

So what you need to do is learn some time management skills. This would not only help you overcome procrastination, but also support you for your whole life. The person, who knows the value of time and learns how to manage it, is invincible.

There could have been many more points which I could have listed to overcome procrastination but as I said, I am going to discuss the ones I have tried myself, above five are the ones that work for me.

When I know dreaming isn’t the solution and stupid childish excuses won’t work, I actually START WORKING. The practical skills like time management, one third rule application and breaking tasks into smaller ones while using reverse psychology to make myself feel that I am loving what I am doing, help a lot.

In fact, these are the ones which REALLY WORK…

Hey, you know I have put in a lot of efforts to write this article and it would take not more than two clicks for you to share this article. So, would you please share this article? It might be helpful for your friends too. 🙂

And if you have some additional tips for overcoming procrastination, do Share with me 🙂