What Is Procrastination?

How is procrastination killing your business growth, and what can you do about it? 

Did you know that procrastination means ‘belonging to tomorrow’? This means we are delaying the important things we need to do. If you didn’t delay and speedily completed your productive or fulfilling tasks, you would certainly boost your business and lead a happier life. Imagine if you didn’t limit yourself, and grew quicker than you thought possible just by quitting procrastination.
If you are a business owner and find  you just can’t commit to completing certain tasks on your list (admin is my most avoided challenge), even if you know they will pay off, then you are dealing with procrastination. Do you catch yourself doing minor household chores or scrolling social media even though there is a line of open tabs in your browser full of research that you need to complete?

Why Do We Need To Stop Procrastinating?

It’s a fact that the more you procrastinate, the worse you feel about yourself, your business and your life. You could experience feelings of negativity, remorse or guilt, and when this happens, often the default setting is to procrastinate even more. You are now stuck in a productivity-killing loop.

Now you know why procrastination is shrinking your business and stealing your personal fulfilment, you can find out what sort of procrastinator you are. When you know which type you are, you’ll be able to pick out the right strategy to kick procrastination.

Can you identify which one you are? Let me know in the comments.

Perfectionist

Are you afraid of showing imperfections? When you spend too much time on unnecessary details or focus on something that isn’t relevant to the core value of the task, you are being a perfectionist. This means that tasks are never completed because, in the eyes of the perfectionist, things are never perfect enough.

Instead of finishing something, perfectionists get caught up in a never-ending cycle of additions, edits, and deletions. 

Ostrich

Are you a daydreamer? An ostrich delays hard work and stress by imagining what could be achieved rather than achieving it.

Dreaming gives this type of person a false sense of achievement, as in their minds, they envision big, ambitious plans. Unfortunately for them, these plans will most likely stay as dreams, and they’ll never accomplish anything truly worthwhile. Planning must be followed by action.

Self-Saboteur

A self-saboteur believes that by doing nothing, bad things won’t happen.

They have developed a fear of making mistakes or doing anything wrong. Their way to avoid these mishaps is to do nothing at all. The result? They may make fewer mistakes – but they also see very few successes.

Daredevil 

Daredevils are those who believe that deadlines can push them to do better. Instead of having a schedule to complete their work, they enjoy pleasure and believe that a ‘diamond is made under pressure’.
Daredevils believe that starting a task too far ahead of deadline will sacrifice their time for pleasure. This is reinforced by the many times they manage to get away with burning the midnight oil. Often, they sacrifice the quality of their work because of rushing it, and they’ve seriously stressed themselves out as well.

Chicken

Chickens lack the ability to prioritise their work. They do what they feel like they should do rather than thinking through what they really need to do.
Prioritising tasks is a step that takes extra time, so the chicken will avoid it. Because of this, they usually end up doing a lot of effortless tasks that don’t contribute much to a project. They’re incessantly busy on low-impact tasks but miss urgent high-impact tasks.

Pick Your Procrastination Style & Fix It…

Perfectionists – re-clarify your goals

Take time out to regroup and ask yourself what you really want to achieve. Have your goals changed? What steps do you need to take? Is what you’re currently doing reflecting where you need to be? What do you need to change? Write things down, scribble them out and rewrite.

Ostriches – do the difficult tasks first

The beginning of the day is when your brain is most productive. Use this window of time to get the more difficult stuff done.
If you leave your monster tasks for later, you’re much more likely to delay because you’re tired and lack motivation by then.
Finishing simple tasks first, like reading all your new emails, only gives you a false sense of being productive. Even if you don’t wake up in the early morning, do the hard work first.

Self-saboteurs – write out a to-do and a not-to-do list each day

When you write things down, you psychologically increase the chances of completing work.
Make a habit of creating a list of the tasks you usually avoid. By doing this, it brings these ‘difficult’ tasks to your attention instead of keeping them locked away somewhere in your avoidance mode.
Remember, think how satisfying and productive it feels to cross off a completed task.

Daredevils – create a timeline with deadlines

Your deadlines aren’t working.
Create a longer timeline and establish smaller deadlines throughout. Each deadline completion is dependent on the next – that’s why it works. This keeps you on track and accountable.

Chickens – break tasks down

Overwhelming thoughts make you procrastinate.
If something feels too big to tackle, it becomes a struggle. This is also true if our goal is too vague and lacking direction.
Break down larger tasks into smaller ones. Smaller steps seem slower but get more results as you gradually build momentum.

All procrastinators – batch your work

This classic strategy is still a game-changer to quitting procrastination. Batching your work means you work on one task for a set time (three hours for instance), but make sure to give yourself regular short breaks.

Did you know that it takes 23 minutes for your brain to switch focus from one task to another? When you work on one task for three hours, you have the best chance of success as your brain is fully focused. Also, it gives you an endpoint. A cut-off time keeps you motivated. At the end of three hours, embrace the glee as you cross tasks off your to-do list. 

The end of procrastination

So, there you have it. You should now know what sort of procrastinator you are and how to transform your schedule from something you can’t even look at to something you are proud of. The next step is to not procrastinate your plan of attack to end procrastination…

Let me know in the comments if you are ready to quit procrastinating and which kind of procrastinator you are.