I wanted to share with you a quick message about procrastination. They say that people can teach what they struggle with the most. And that is certainly true with me.
I have struggled with procrastination throughout my entire career. I don’t know why I procrastinate, but it is something I am constantly dealing with and am always trying to figure out how to break out of. When I do bust out of procrastination, then I go into hyper-activity and I get a lot of stuff done. So, I wanted to give you some strategies that have worked for me.
What I’ve found is that a big, long to-do list doesn’t help your procrastination issues at all. Instead, if you make a to-do with just one do-able, simple thing then you can do that in a day. You don’t allow yourself the luxury of looking at all of those different things and confusing your mind. You have just one thing on your to-do list. That’s it. Most of the time, that strategy breaks me out of procrastination and gets me moving. Of course, I still have my big, long to-do list someplace else, but for that day, I just have one thing on my list. So, figure out what that one thing is that you can do in the next 24 hours that will move you a little closer to your goals, dreams, and aspirations.
The second strategy is creating a deadline and announcing that deadline. I will often give myself deadlines so that I am forced to deal with the procrastination. I can get a lot done when I only have a little bit of time before I have to complete it. For example, a few weeks ago I had to do a full day’s worth of recording. The few days prior to it, I went to work, prepared, and got ready to do all of that video work.
So, setting deadlines, putting that one thing on your to-do list, and getting that one thing done are great strategies to break out of procrastination.