Best 8 Tips For Dealing With Procrastination

It’s no secret that everyone procrastinates at times, it’s easy to avoid difficult tasks and look for distractions - which, unfortunately for those procrastinators out there, are increasingly available, but here are the best 8 tips I’ve found for dealing with procrastination that will help you become more efficient at work.

1. Tidy your desk. 

Arrange things on your desk in a way that will make you more efficient in completing your tasks. When tidying my desk I’ve filed some papers, organised my stationary and put up some photos. As I see it you are not wasting time as it’ll make you more productive when you get back to work and give you fresh energy after taking your mind off your workload.

2. Schedule your time in smaller increments. 

Ensure you don’t set deadlines too far in the future. If you have long term objectives and goals then break them down into smaller tasks with shorter deadlines. For example it sounds a lot less to me to write a blog post a week than to have to write four a month.

3. Tell others your goals. 

For me, this is one of the best motivators. By announcing my goals to friends and colleagues I have constant reminders to get the work done and I want to ensure it’s done by the deadline.

4. Do the worst things first. 

I am one of those people that eat my sprouts first at Christmas dinner because it gets it out the way. The same applies to work. If I complete the tasks I least want to do first I procrastinate less as I look forward to carrying out the more interesting work.

5. Take guilt free breaks. 

Taking a break is a great way to revitalise yourself and beat procrastination, but here’s the kicker... If you don’t switch off, and you can't stop worrying about the work that you should be doing, then you’re not going to benefit from your break.

6. Surround yourself with hardworking people 

It’s much harder to procrastinate when you have hardworkers surrounding you in both your personal and work life. If you surround yourselves with these people use them as your motivators

7. Eliminate distractions. 

Make it more difficult for you to procrastinate by removing any distractions. Put your phone at the bottom of your bag or put it in your desk drawer and ignore it until you’ve completed an item on your to do list.

8. Reward yourself.

You may have seen the Big Bang Theory episode where Sheldon feeds Penny chocolates as positive reinforcement. The great thing is that positive reinforcement works really well on you. If you set yourself challenging goals and promise yourself a reward you are much less likely to procrastinate. I find that my favourite foods are a great reward!

I hope with these tips you can get more work done and procrastinate less. Remember that it's possible to overcome procrastination with  just a little effort and these 8 tips.

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Alex Henderson is a Marketing Executive and Business with Marketing Management Major.

Other articles by Alex include;

- 5 Tips For Effective Digital Marketing

- 4 Marketing Tips For Small Businesses

Twitter: @ThisIsAlexHendo