OK — I know it is not Monday.
The truth is that I have a confession to make – I have been meaning to get back to “Motivational Monday” posts for some time, but I have been procrastinating. I've actually been procrastinating about a lot of internet marketing things in the last few months.
Maybe I just got a little tired. My life is busy. Lots of things to do for the holiday season. I got a cold. Blah, blah, blah.
I was procrastinating (and being lazy).
Stop Procrastinating
If you are working as an entrepreneur (especially if you are working alone at night after your day job like I am), one of the most destructive things you can do to your productivity and to your goals is to procrastinate. Of course, everyone knows this; and it is certainly simple to say and to understand, but doing something about it is an entirely different story.
I am the poster child for procrastination.
I personally suggest that you tackle procrastination issues by making a conscious effort to determine why you have them to begin with. Figure out the cause. That's what I did.
For instance, are you procrastinating when you get bored with your work? Or do you procrastinate when you run into a snag and can’t immediately see how best to get around it. Or, is it fear of failure.
In my case, I was procrastinating because my business had become a big unconnected sprawling mess that needed to be cleaned up. Tons of half-finished projects and incomplete websites were cluttering my mind. Not sure what to do first, it was easy to do nothing late at night and just watch old NCIS reruns.
I'm still consolidating thing and killing stuff off.
Know The Cause Of Your Procrastination
Whatever your reason for procrastinating, it’s important to know the cause.
Try to focus on different strategies you can use to help with each case of procrastination you encounter. For instance, think about how you can continue plowing through your work, even if you encounter something that doesn’t allow you to do things in the order you’d prefer.
In my case, I start the week (on Sunday night) with a list of 4 tasks for each day of the week (28 total tasks for the week). Each day I work on one critical task from the three main parts of my business, and I add one “floating task” to cover other stuff.
Sometimes, just getting off the couch and getting started is all it takes.
Join us! Every Monday morning at 6AM Central Time (except when we procrastinate) we publish the motivational tip of the week. Each week we offer a short simple motivational tip to help you in your business. If you like this, you can check out our other Articles On Motivation.
Ah, procrastination. The death of so many great ideas.
The best tip I ever heard for dealing with procrastination is to get started. Not to force yourself to do something necessarily, but to just start. If I’m avoiding writing an article for example, I might give myself permission to go do something else, but only AFTER I spend 5 minutes outlining. That’s it, just five minutes, then I can be free to continue procrastinating.
But 9 times out of 10, I don’t stop at just the outline. Once you get started, it’s much easier to continue. I think I learned that in physics class long ago, and it’s still true.
Physics? Are you a science or engineering type?
HaHa! No. But I’m the geek type and it sounded like a cool class to take. Which it was.
I was beginning to think you fell off the face of the earth. As you know, I’m pretty lazy 🙂 Fortunately I don’t have the time restrictions some people have, so I can usually start to see when my procrastination starts catching up and I can get my butt in gear.
I will admit that all the procrastination over the years has cost me. It’s hard telling how much more money I would be making now if it weren’t for that… I don’t even want to know!
Great points though and you’ve motivated me to cut out some of the dead time and get a little more work done each day.
Mark – you and I have the same issue – we spend 60+ hours a week working for “the man”. So, I really don’t know if procrastination is the issue so much as time constraints and an over-generous belief of what we can accomplish on a part time basis.
We all suffer from lack of focus, and we have ourselves to blame. To many gurus telling us what to do. AND, a buzz in our ear telling us that our ______(adsense site, membership site, etc.) is old and archaic unless we are using this new thing.
And stop procastinating on that podcast! 😉
LOL — that is exactly the problem. Will do.
Mark
Boy can I relate! The to-do list get’s rearranged constantly… because I don’t want to do this or that right now.
I love Cindy’s idea of just giving yourself permission to play… AFTER… 5 minutes of work.
The idea of breaking down your project or idea into baby steps is powerful. The task won’t seem so daunting.
My biggest problem is that I forget! I forget that I purchased this thing and need to use it in that way.
The latest blunder happened when I was searching for a good domain name for a new project, looked to see if it was available… and it wasn’t.
I checked WHO-IS and it was ME!! LOL… Duh.
I may think I’m organized – but that just proved that what I think and reality are miles apart. 🙂
My first thought while reading this is I am a victim of procrastination too. But after a moments reflection I had to admit I am instead, a willing accomplice. Shame on me.
Gotta get back to work. Thanks for the article.
I’m certainly in contention for the title of World’s Worst Procrastinator. But I’ve found that I’m more effiicient now that I upgraded Evernote. I have a couple notes on there that I use as Honey Dew lists. And the more-frequent reminders are more likely to catch me in the mood to do thins I tend to put off.
The two main reasons I procrastinate are (1) don’t know what to do or perhaps how to do the task (and may not be interested in figuring out how or where to learn what or how), or (2) don’t LIKE doing the task that needs to be done. Sometimes I also trip over fear of failure, but it’s really mostly about #1 or #2 for me. If I don’t like the job at hand, there’s not a lot to be done about it but to force myself to jump right in (altho I sometimes fantasize about having enough income to outsource some of those types of things — and that’s a decent alternative for some people).
If I don’t know how or what I need to do, I remind myself that once I’ve tackled this, (1) I’ll have a new skill or bit of knowledge under my belt, (2) I may go on learning about this, but the hard part — the procrastination-promoting part — will have been conquered, probably. THEN I try to wake up Curious Me or remember times when I jumped right in and it wasn’t so painful or I was delighted with what I learned, or it didn’t take any time at all, etc. Whatever works / all of the above.
Glad you’re back, Mark.
What synergy! I just wrote an article entitled, Productivity versus Procrastination for my newsletter. For a similar take on the subject, view it here: http://www.thebusinesspractitioner.com/newsletter.htm