5 Awesome Ways To Beat Procrastination

By Carly Jacobs

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I get kind of grumpy and fidgety when I procrastinate. I do useless things like stare aimlessly into the fridge, dick around on Facebook or annoy Mr Smaggle whose standing desk is within arms reach of mine. I’ll peg socks at his head trying to get him to play with me because I don’t want to write out my invoices or source images for the next weeks blog posts. It doesn’t happen often but when it does I need to nip it in the bud before it gets really bad. Here are a few things you can do to beat procrastination…

Don’t work where you always work

If I work at home or my office, I have lots habitual procrastination techniques in place. If I remove myself from places of familiarity, I’m a bit lost and therefore tend to focus more. I’ve been working in libraries a lot over the last month and they’ve been amazing for my focus and productivity. You can’t talk in libraries and you can’t watch loud YouTube videos or answer the phone. There’s no fridge or TV and you can’t just leave your stuff on a desk and go for a walk outside. It’s like a good kind of productivity jail. Try it out – libraries rock.

Drop everything from your To Do list… except one item

Sometimes when you’re procrastinating, it’s because your to-do list is way too long and it becomes overwhelming. If I have too much stuff to do, I’ll grab a post-it and write one must do item on it and I’ll stick it to the wall above my computer. It reminds me to stay on task and complete that one item without distracting myself with a million other things I need to do.

Plan to fail

Plan a crap out time. A ‘crap out’ is when you lose the plot – you throw up your hands and give up. iIf you plan the time you’re going to do this, your subconscious will wait until that moment. For example as I’m writing this article (my 7th article of the day) I plan to crap out in 20 mins. It’s pretty much the only thing keeping me on my task. If I didn’t have that time in my head, I’d be on Facebook right now.

Schedule your dicking around on the internet time

I spend a lot of time telling people not to dick around on Facebook but you know what? Dicking around on Facebook is fun. I thoroughly enjoy it, but I know it’s a waste of time which is why I schedule my dicking around time. I usually allow myself 20 minutes at the end of the day after I’ve done my exercise. I need a bit of a cool down after hitting the treadmill so I grab my phone and allow myself 20 minutes of useless internet time and I bloody love it and I don’t feel guilty. Wasting time on the internet is fine, you just need to schedule that time so half an hour doesn’t turn into three hours.

Set a five-minute timer for a task you really don’t want to do

Even dream jobs can be exhausting and all jobs have nasty parts to them. If there’s a particular task you hate (*cough* invoicing *cough*) set a timer for 5 minutes and do just 5 minutes of work on it. You can stop after 5 minutes but chances are you’ll be in the groove and you’ll be able to slam through your unpleasant task.

Are you a hardcore procrastinator? What tricks do you use to keep yourself on track?

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About Carly Jacobs

Carly is the founding editor of Smaggle which launched in 2007 back when blogging was weird. She has appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Cosmopolitan and Cleo magazines. Hoop earrings are totally her thing and she almost got run over by Myf Warhurst while out jogging one day.

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