Three tips to beat procrastination
Hello Procrastination, haven’t seen you since….last week…
Do you find that after Christmas, when you have taken time out from work, spent it with family and friends, ate and drunk a lot you find it even harder than normal to get ‘back to the reality’ and get back to work?
I must be honest with you, for the past two years, I have probably done more procrastination than I’ve ever done before.
Most of you don’t know that I have had very challenging two years – personally and professionally. I have been very unwell at times, mentally and physically, and there were few occasions I feared the worst. Not that anyone really noticed as I was mostly very good at hiding it, at the same time I felt I was at the edge of the cliff. I felt like I was fighting against a storm…and let me tell you, being 5 foot 1, it can be a bit of a struggle not to fly away.
All of this also lead to many learnings, actions, new opportunities, a lot of self-care and self-development.
Now that things are moving towards the right direction, you’d think procrastination never comes to visit me. Wrong! It still pops in every now and again, especially after Christmas break.
It’s the excuses like ‘well I didn’t see ‘Home Alone 1’ this year. I’ll just watch it before I do some work. What the hell it’s Christmas (even though I could recite it by heart)
So, here are few things you can do to beat procrastination and get back on track:
Don’t wait for motivation. Take the first step without it. First step is always the hardest so start with small actions. For example, if you want to get back to your exercise regime, just start with 15 minutes. Often, after 15 minutes, you feel better and you think ‘what the hell, I might as well do another 15 minutes’ by the time you realise, you have done much more, than you originally felt doing.
Do the thing you are putting off with something you naturally love. For example, if you look at your house that after few Christmas gatherings looks like a bomb site and you like dancing, you might want to do a bit of tidying up whilst dancing around a house. In fact, this is what I do a lot and I always have a ball (Did you see what I did there?)
Team up and surround yourself with action takers. Most accomplishments come from teaming up and get your goal achieved in half of the time. But, choose your team. Social environment has huge impact on our behaviour. Social experiments have proven that we often conform to group norms and behaviours, so choose wisely.
These are just few tricks to get your brain engaged after wonderful festivities, so try it out and give me a shout, if you have any questions.
The thing is guys, whether you are a therapist, coach or Bob the builder, we all procrastinate at times. The key is to have a toolbox of techniques to rely on as and when you need them.
If you want to learn more, in January I will be running weekly FB lives in my #YesYouCan FB group helping you to beat procrastination and build your motivation.
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