
How do I stop putting things off? Procrastination
I’m excited to be able to share some social media, wellness, and motivation tips with you today. This topic has a lot to do with myself and I know some of you.
Today we are going to talk about procrastination.
Today, let’s stop putting it off.
Let’s start off with what procrastination is. You want to achieve something, but you keep putting it off. I want you to think of something right now that you really wanted to do and still have not done.
I’m going to give you three tips today to stop putting it off. I know these will help you because it has helped me these past four years. Before this, I was horrible on discipline and on time.
The number one reason you’re procrastinating is lack of clarity. If you know exactly what you want to do then you will be less likely to procrastinate. If you don’t know it, you kind of resist it. If you don’t know where to begin, there is no way for you to start. Once you have clarity of what you want, then you can start.
Let me give you some examples.
Say you’re a writer and you want to write a book. You want to finish it by the end of the year and every day you tell yourself, “I can’t wait to get my book done!” But you are not writing it.
What you need is clarity.
You need clarity on what you are going to write about, who your niche is, who are the people who will buy your book, where you are going to present it, and so on. You may even think about how many words you want it to be!
You have to put forth the effort to write because before you know it, it will be November and you will still have not even started your book.
Another thing you can do is set concrete goals.
Set a daily, everyday routine. Let me share another example:
I have a company back home in Brazil that is all about sales. I tell my marketing ladies that they need to contact 30 people every day. I need to know the average out of those 30 who is saying yes and who is saying no. I’ve given them a concrete goal.
The second reason for procrastination is that you are too overwhelmed.
You have too much to do and your goal sometimes is so big that you do not even know where to start.
For an example, some people want to start losing weight. Yet their goal is so big that it overwhelms them. They have no idea where to start– what they should be eating, how to workout, and so on. They do not know what to do and so they just get overwhelmed.
The third reason is that you’re not rewarding yourself (and you need to!)
If you lacked clarity and you know now where you are going, you now have goals to get you where you need to go.
Instead of being overwhelmed, you break up the big goals into small goals every day so that at the end of the week you can see what you have done.
Now it’s time to celebrate those victories! Fulfilling your goals– big or small– gets you closer to the final result. That is worth recognizing!
I was told that if I lose 30 pounds, we would go to Disney. Guess what? At the end of 6 months, I lost 40 pounds. We are going to Disney!!
You need to have something at the end of the line that you know you have accomplished (like losing 30 pounds), but also something that you achieve by finishing your goal (like going to Disney).
One of the things helps me out is my calendar.
I have daily goals I put in there with my activities that give me results. The only way it will happen is by writing them down. If you keep them in your mind, you will forget.
Start writing down your thoughts and stop getting so frustrated with procrastination. Start with doing the daily activities a little bit at a time and before you know it, you are going to be so much happier because you know you achieved exactly what you wanted from the beginning.
Di Carter — Founder of Social Entrepreneur Leaders
