For those of you who know me, you know that I’m not the kind of person who procrastinates…ever. In fact, I’m typically on the extreme opposite of procrastination. Well, recently I procrastinated; I made the mistake of putting off a business-related task I didn’t want to do and, as any logical person would expect, it almost backfired on me. As I’m sure most of you would agree, it’s not easy for us to admit we made mistakes (especially to other people). However, I think it’s important that we realize when we make mistakes so we can try to learn from them. With that being said, here are a few lessons I pulled out of my mistake and how to stop procrastinating.
Be sure to add your insight.
Procrastination in itself is a waste of time.
I know, it sounds a little silly at first but think about it; the time I spent thinking about this particular task is time I could have spent simply completing it. This particular task would have taken me about 30 minutes to complete but, for some reason, I kept delaying it and it took me nearly 3 weeks to complete. I spent more time thinking about completing this task than it would have taken me to complete it in the first place. That was a complete waste of time.
Procrastination makes starting more difficult.
In other words, the more we procrastinate, the more difficult it becomes for us to get started. By the 2nd or 3rd time I put off this task, actually starting it wasn’t even a realistic thought in my mind. It would have taken much less effort to simply complete the task when I first scheduled it.
Procrastination is expensive.
I’ve never read an actual study on this before, but I imagine that it’s pretty safe to say that procrastination is pretty expensive. For example, how much does procrastination cost a college student who isn’t focused in college and takes an extra 2 or 3 years to graduate? Once you take into consideration the added tuition and the loss of a potential salary, the cost becomes fairly substantial.
In a business situation, procrastination could be even more expensive. Consider what would happen if a manager put off a task that made a client angry; the business could potentially lose that client and possibly even future clients.
How to STOP procrastinating
The truth is, everyone slips up every now and then; we understand that. The trick is for us to realize that we’ve messed up and take actions to learn from our mistakes. In relation to procrastination, here are a few techniques that have typically worked well for me in the past. Feel free to let me know if you have any others that have worked well for you.
- Recognize when you are procrastinating.
- Give yourself a timed schedule for completing tasks.
- If possible, delegate tasks that you continually struggle with or someone else can do better.
- If possible, knock out simple tasks first.
- Prioritize tasks and find ways to be more efficient.
- Schedule time to do something fun.
- Have someone or something that keeps you accountable.
- Start right now.