WORK SMARTER: Try these strategies to beat procrastiworking (and really get stuff done)
Welcome readers! The Sunday edition of Fast Company Daily is now dedicated to Work Smarter: a weekly newsletter of career, leadership, and productivity advice, curated by Fast Company’s Work Life editors, Kathleen Davis , Lydia Dishman and Julia Herbst .
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This morning on the way to the office, I saw a fellow sporting a T-shirt that declared: “I’m not LAZY, I just enjoy doing nothing.” For some of us, doing nothing comes with a low-level anxiety that we’re just one nap away from career failure. So we get busy. Yet sometimes, the busywork gets in the way of accomplishing bigger goals. Like chasing inbox zero while a more pressing project deadline looms. There’s even a name for it:?procrastiworking .?
Coach Amanda McKinney puts it this way: “Procrastiworking is when you’re doing something that could be considered work, so you feel justified in taking the action, but it’s not the thing you need to be doing. It’s you procrastinating by doing other work.”
McKinney argues that tackling your inbox is really just taking on someone else’s to-do list. And, she cautions,?“if we aren’t careful, other people’s tasks will overtake our day. That’s how we end up feeling like we were busy all day but don’t feel productive.”
How can you beat this and work smarter (and really get stuff done)? Over the course of our coverage, we’ve amassed a cache of resources that can help you do several things including?understanding why ?you procrastinate and learn?why it’s an emotional problem ?and what happens to your brain when you’re stalling. You’ll also learn?mental strategies ?to beat procrastination and how to?train that pesky mindset ?to not give in to “fake work .” For those who prefer to listen or watch, we’ve served up tips and tactics on our?New Way We Work?podcast ?and a quick video that outlines how to?stop procrastinating , once and for all.
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If you found this?newsletter?useful, forward it to your favorite procrastinator!
More Fast Company stories on procrastination....
Strategic Growth Solutionist
1 年Interesting! I like
Sales Associate at American Airlines
1 年Thanks for sharing
Next Trend Realty LLC./wwwHar.com/Chester-Swanson/agent_cbswan
1 年Thanks for posting.
Membership Manager at Naples Botanical Garden
1 年I'm a big believer in Eat The Frog First. Kind of cuts out all of the procrasti-things.
President @ Agile New England | MBA
1 年Very salient points here, especially during a time of relatively low job satisfaction for many. Once an email jockey, I've since embraced the fact that using email (while great for notifications due to integration with calendar, and the many rules one can implement around notifications) is *not* the way to get work done. It took leaving a large IT firm where I would get hundreds of messages daily - including weekends - to a medium-sized tech company for me to learn this invaluable lesson. ??