Posts Tagged ‘Procrastination’

Pushing Past Procrastination

Thursday, June 30th, 2016
procrastination office worker imageRita Perea is president and CEO of Rita Perea Leadership Coaching and Consulting, specializing in working with senior leaders to successfully engage employees, lead teams, manage change and balance work and life.

Being at the top of your game day after day, and living your life to its fullest, requires the development of successful time mastery habits. “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today,” carries the classic wisdom from a very accomplished Benjamin Franklin.

As an executive coach and a certified work-life balance specialist, I have had many clients who express a feeling of being overwhelmed with “too much to do and not enough time to do it.”  This feeling of not knowing where to begin can lead to inertia, being weighed down and unable to move. They find themselves in a full-blown habit of procrastination – putting things off until tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day.

At one time or another we have all fallen prey to the self-sabotaging behavior of putting important tasks aside until “some other time”.   Unfortunately for some who are stuck in the avoidance cycle, another time never magically appears.  This is the opposite of the Nike tag line “Just Do It”.  In our culture winners achieve results and losers just do nothing.  To be self-actualized at work and in our personal lives, we need to overcome the behaviors that shoot us in the foot, often making us feel badly about ourselves.

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Read My Post About Procrastination in Business Record Daily

Wednesday, January 28th, 2015

Want to push past procrastination and achieve more? Read how in the Business Record’s IowaBiz blog.

From Procrastination to Productivity

Wednesday, February 5th, 2014

“Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday ” – Napoleon Hill, American Author

One bad habit prevents success more than all of the other harmful habits combined: Procrastination.

Procrastination is simply putting really important things off, telling yourself that you will do it later or tomorrow. But the problem is that often “tomorrow” never happens.  Success comes from doing the really important things that are critical to obtaining results. We rarely procrastinate about the unimportant things!

We all suffer from procrastination at one time or another. We all get sucked into doing low priority tasks (like answering email or rearranging our desk) when we should be focusing our time on more important projects (like the budget forecast report for the

We engage in procrastination when: (1) things are difficult; (2) the task involves things that are unpleasant; or (3) the task can lead to making a tough decision.department that you manage).

Rather than stretch and grow, we hide our head in the sand and retreat to something easier, more fun, or mindless.

But, the original problem remains and NOW MAY BE BIGGER because we did not take care of it when we had the prime opportunity. Procrastination creates a vicious cycle of events and often leads to more procrastination.

 

What’s a good, well-intentioned executive to do?

Steps you can take to tame the procrastination monster:
• Admit when you are procrastinating.
• Determine why you are procrastinating (Does it involve an complex task? Does it feel overwhelming?)
• Do a “micro-action”- a baby step to get you moving in the direction of completing the task. Do you procrastinate about exercising? Put your exercise clothes next to your bed (fireman style) so you can get up and jump into them in the morning.
• Do a small portion of the task (a chunk) that will get you moving in the right direction.
• Once you get moving- keep moving!
• Reward yourself for a job well done. You deserve it!

Procrastination is really a bad habit that we want to change. Make a commitment to take action for 21 days, the length of time it takes to create your new habit- moving forward. Your stress levels will decrease. You will be focused and clear-thinking because you have minimized your distractions.

There now, aren’t you glad that you took that first step toward productivity?

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