Stop Procrastinating!

Procrastination: the act of unnecessarily postponing decisions or actions.

Let’s be honest, how many of you are sat there reading this blog, when really you should be doing something else? Don’t worry, I won’t tell you off! It’s a totally normal thing. A lot of business owners I meet, including my clients and even myself, refer to themselves as ‘the King/Queen of procrastination.’ We can all be the absolute masters of avoiding doing a task by doing a dozen other ones instead.

We all have them. Those tasks on our to-do lists that, for whatever reason, just never get done. They always get dropped to the bottom of the list, and then moved onto tomorrows to-do list instead. Before you know it, that task has been on there for a week, two weeks, a month. Maybe even a year! And with that procrastination comes guilt and more guilt. And any joy you might feel about starting the task just gets less and less. If that sounds familiar, stay tuned, and I’ll share with you my 4 top tips that will help you beat the procrastination and get sh*t done.

Why Do We Procrastinate?

I know it might feel like you’re the only one procrastinating, especially if you look out and compare yourself to other business owners getting loads and loads done. And yet we all do it. It’s hardwired in our brains. It happens usually because we’re either not sure how to do “the thing”, or because we just really, really don’t want to do “the thing”. We get demotivated, our focus goes out the window, and we end up doing something more fulfilling instead. If you want to get into specific reasons people procrastinate, here are a few I’ve come across:

• Aversion – When it’s a task you know you won’t enjoy and don’t want to do. We’ve all felt that one!
• Abstract goals – When goals are too vague, with no clear route to success.
• Perfectionism – When you want something to be perfect and are so afraid of making a mistake that you end up not taking any action at all.
• Fear of Failure – When you’re afraid of failing at the task, so you just don’t do it (ensuring failure).

The problem is, as business owners we can’t really afford to procrastinate. There’s too much to do, and most of it is pretty important to success. So, how do you stop procrastinating and get those niggly tasks done? Well, I have a few tips for you!

Nell’s Top Tips

1. Do The Task First Thing. As in, the first thing you do when you get to work in the morning. You’ve probably all heard the phrase ‘Eat That Frog’ when reading around time management, especially if you’ve spent any time around me! It’s dead simple really – take the thing you’re currently procrastinating on, and make it the first thing you do in the morning. Before you open your email or check your phone, do the task. (if it’s possible of course, I don’t want you making phone calls to clients at 6 am!). If you do it first, you already for that great feeling of continuing today knowing that one big, ugly frog has been ticked off your list.

2. Book The Time in The Diary. Rather than just leaving it on the to-do list, book a time in your diary to sit down and actually do “the thing”. Whether it’s 15 minutes or an hour, get a dedicated time in your diary to do it, and nothing else. If it’s not in your diary, it’s really easy for other things to come up, things to happen and keep distracting you from doing the thing – so it won’t ever get done. So treat it like an appointment, but with yourself.

3. Break it Down. If you’re really struggling with procrastinating, breaking tasks into smaller chunks can be really helpful. It makes the task seem less daunting and more manageable, so you’re more likely to do it. So if, for example, you’re procrastinating writing a blog, instead of saying: ‘tomorrow I’m sitting down at 10 am for an hour to write a blog’, let’s make that, ‘tomorrow I’m going to sit down for an hour to write the first paragraph of that blog.’ Now, if you get into the zone after writing that first paragraph then great, continue! If you still don’t feel it at that stage and it still feels hard, that’s ok! At least you have a paragraph, you’re 1 step further along in the process than you were. So break it down into really small chunks and just do one thing, rather than the whole.

4. Turn Off Distractions. There are thousands of things begging for our attention during the day, so it can be hard to not get distracted from something you don’t really want to be doing. So when you sit down to do “the thing”, turn off your phone. Turn off your email. Mute your notifications from social media for an hour. Close your office door and stick up the ‘in a meeting’ sign. Whatever it takes to give yourself that distraction free time. After all, if you were in a meeting with a client you wouldn’t be checking your phone, or seeing an email and wandering off to do something else, would you? No! So give yourself that same respect, gratitude and time to finish the thing.

5. Bonus Tip! If all else fails, get an accountability buddy. And often, I’m that person for my clients. But it doesn’t have to be a coach or even someone you pay. It’s just someone you tell ‘Hey, by 11am Wednesday, I’ll have written 1 paragraph of my blog.’ Knowing that you’ve got to come back and tell them how you did. Often the thought of having to tell anybody that they didn’t actually do the task is enough of a spur to get them to do the task. It’s just a little bit of accountability in the background to give you a push in the right direction.

Procrastinating is a tough one, because everybody does it. But as a business owner if you really want to succeed, you need to be able to identify why you procrastinate, on what, and find ways to avoid it. That might mean outsourcing certain tasks so that they’re done by someone else. It might mean getting a business coach to hold you accountable to the long list of things you need to do. Or it might just mean trying a few things and seeing what works. And if you’re not sure, my office door is (almost) always open, and you can book a coffee & chat to talk things through here.

And for now, go back to work and stop reading these blogs!