How to Stop Procrastinating

There are two types of procrastination and these two types need different approach. What are the two types? Here you go:

• procrastinating everyday tasks or chores,
• procrastinating tasks that could lead to potentially life-changing results.

These two are different because motivation behind each of them is different. In this post we will give clear steps on how to deal with both types of work.

Chores, homework and everyday tasks

Something like cleaning your house is not a very exciting thing to do and when all you want is to sit in your bed on Sunday it’s indeed very hard to force yourself to get to work. Having a clean home is nice but it’s not exciting.

The most important thing to do is to get started. Figure out how long you can work on a given task without getting tired or bored and promise yourself you will stop immediately when the time is over. This period of time is your attention span. It can be as long as few hours or as short as 10 minutes. Don’t despair, even 10 minutes will do!

To get started tell yourself you don’t have to complete your task. In our example, you don’t have to clean entire house. It is perfectly okay to clean just one room or a part of a room or whatever you can do in 10 minutes. This should be easy enough to convince yourself to get to work. After 10 minutes (or whatever your attention span is) you can stop and take a break, have a coffee or watch TV. After a while you can have another 10-minute session of work.

It might seem like 10-minute sessions won’t make difference, but they will. It is much better than doing nothing at all and it tends to create positive momentum. These short sessions of work aren’t tiring but you will be excited to see the results of your work. It’s like you don’t do anything and still get results.

Tasks that could lead to life-changing results

When we refer to potentially life-changing results we refer to tasks like building your own business. Usually we are already motivated for these tasks but we procrastinate because we aren’t sure where to start. In this case you need to work on defining exact step-by-step process that is proven to work. Needless to say, it might take time to figure out what works, but the point is you are already well-motivated. Lack of motivation is not the reason of your procrastination. The reason is the lack of well-defined plan that is proven to work.

Take time to educate yourself, ask those who did it before you and give it a try. When you are just in the beginning stages trying to figure out what works, treat it like chores. To avoid procrastination break your work in small sessions like we did in the example above. Eventually you will be able to shape a step-by-step process that is proven to work. Now you will be able to take a massive action because you are already motivated and have a good plan.

Conclusion

For everyday tasks and chores work in short and frequent sessions and stop before you feel tired or bored.

For major potentially life-changing tasks create well-defined plan that is proven to work. Once the plan is in place your actions become automatic because you are already motivated to succeed and know exactly what to do.

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