Tired of Procrastinating? Here are 8 Ways to Help You Beat Procrastinating

If you are here, I am sure you already know what 'procrastination' is. So let's cut to the chase, how to overcome it? 

The following are eight ways to help you develop focus and stick to your routine. 

I am confident in these as they have helped me at different phases of my growth, and I am writing this article with the hope that they will help you too. I would dearly appreciate your feedback once you have tried any of these methods <3.

1. Time Blocking – Intermediate Package

I find Youtube a great source for information and learning. Therefore, there are many Youtubers I follow and rely on for learning something new and getting authentic references. Mooroo, Crash Course, Raja Zia ul Haq, Ali Abdaal, Pick up Limes, and What If are some of the renowned and useful channels with random themes and focused topics.

Meanwhile, Ali Abdal is a graduate doctor who is a productivity enthusiast, and is the principal shared distraction in his video, "How I manage my time." It says that block your time on your calendar at a specific time and blocks all other activities forcefully even if you have to avoid any distractions. This will decrease your chances of procrastination as you would have no other alternate option. It will help you in completing the task more effectively.

2.  3F Approach

Foresight - Plan things ahead to get an idea about what you will be required to do. This will prepare you to get into the zone easily, as you would already be aware of what lies ahead.  

Focus - Focus on what you have to do. The best way is to try methods like the 20-5 principle (put on a timer on your phone for 20 minutes and keep every task as well as potential distractions aside. And purely focus on the task at hand for straight 20 minutes. Once the timer hits, leave your work and take 5 minutes break. You can do whatever you want in those minutes and then go back to working for 20 minutes again. This way, you will be able to focus as well as won't feel exhausted.)

Fun - In the end, enjoying the work you are doing is most important to keep you engaged and active. If you are not enjoying the work, you are more likely to pick up your phone and scroll through social media or reply to a text on Whatsapp. So finding the fun element is integral to maintaining the workflow.  

Here, the reason for being unclear about one's goal can be related. If you've ambiguous or abstract goals, you will surely pick up a task that does not truly align with your potential and personality leading you to get drained and exhausted with no valuable outcome. Therefore, clarity of your goals and planning of how you would be moving towards them is beyond impactful in your life. 

3. Hell Yes or No Approach

This is a mindful approach to decision-making. It says that we should take decisions based on the intuition and excitement felt immediately at the time of the offer. Precisely, ‘you should only say yes to the tasks and things you truly want to be a part of, however, if you ever feel doubtful about anything, immediately say no to it as it is something that would consume your energy unnecessarily’

4. Be Mindful of the Workload

Staying mindful of your workload and keeping realistic track of them will help you manage your time more conveniently and possibly in the best way.

Keep the list short, and accept your limitations. Cull the bottom of your to-do list viciously. If someone gives you a task, and you know it will be ranked so low that it will never get done, then say "no, sorry, can't do it". If you accept a task, but other, higher priority tasks then push it down into the "will never get done" level, then accept that you have failed that task, and manage the expectations of the task-giver. Hand off that task, give it back, return their money, whatever it takes: get it off your list. 

5. Make a Schedule and Stick to it!

Stop working promptly. This is important, too. Especially when working from home. If you're in the zone, keep it if you like. But don't fool yourself, and don't force it. Having a schedule means that, outside of the time when you should be working, you are actually... free. Like, legitimately free of having to do the stuff you have been stressing over. When I discovered this, that free time was a thing I could let myself have even if I'm behind on my deadlines, it was so massively liberating, I can't tell you. I could go for a walk, watch a movie, chat with friends, and not feel overwhelming guilt. Because I'd done the thing that I had scheduled for that time.

6. Learn Time Management

Time Management is a skill that can help you deal with procrastination. We are more likely to procrastinate when we don’t have a proper schedule and yet have to sketch at-hand tasks. 

Make a to-do list, and use techniques like time blocking, and the 20/80 rule for better time management. 

7. Meditation and Mindfulness

Procrastination is also a form of escape or outcome from the feeling of uneasiness we feel when there is instability inside. When we are anxious about anything, it messes with our attention span making us unable to focus on things. Therefore, we are more prone to postpone our work or tasks that require our attention, especially.

Free time, twice a day. This is one of the most beneficial self-discovered strategies by Dewi Morgan, an Electrical Engineer and one of the Quora users that actively share insights and advice on the concerned topic on the platform. He founds this strategy helpful for him as it allowed him to bookmark all of the extra stuff, content, videos, memes, and basically anything that grabbed his attention during working hours as something to do in his free time. 

'If I have this free time twice during my working day, say at lunchtime and after work, then there's never more than four hours until the next playtime. It's no hardship to put something off for four hours. Even if, as it happens, when the four hours have passed, I don't feel the link is as interesting anymore.'

8. Emotional Intelligence

Being aware of your mood and the reasons behind them can help you deal with the situation and yourself more mindfully. When you know yourself and your potential behavior, you’re more able to manage things efficiently.

Pychyl says working to reduce your emotional response will help you better manage small tasks. “We put off a lot of little things and they become big in our minds because we experience the amygdala hijack,” he explains, referring to an immediate emotional response that’s out of measure with the actual thing that triggered it. “We have a negative reaction the moment we think of the task, and that tends to feed on itself.”

It is also important to understand that procrastination is adaptive. Dewi put it as, ' to realize that I'm not defective, I'm the result of millions of years of people who lived because they put off until tomorrow what was not life-threatening, and lived the easy life as much as they could rather than proactively taking risks.' However, now there can be some tasks that could potentially harm us, in different forms, if delayed for too long. So it has become the need of the hour to figure the issue out and learn to 'exploit and hack it, rather than drowning in a mire of guilt.'

'Use it as a ‘tool’ for productivity

Overcoming procrastination is hard and takes a lot of willpower. But the work required to build better habits will save you so much pain. Pulling all-nighters to finish assignments and the panic of realizing that you didn't get something done is just plain terrible. Building these habits and adopting these strategies would not be a piece of cake either, as it is always tempting, although very momentarily, to let the required task go for the time being and scroll social media passively. However, once you have developed them, you will feel much more contented and happier. And this will not only improve your mood, focus, and performance but also the quality of your overall life as you will be able to find more free time to enjoy yourself with your family and basically do anything you want to do to relax.  

Recommended Books: 

1. Gretchen Rubin's Better than Before - Habit Building. Clarity. 

2. Atomic Habits by James Clare - Habit Building. Practical Strategies.

3. The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma - Spiritual. Mindfulness. Meditation.