12 Effective Ways to Avoid Procrastination

Procrastination is a thief of time. Experts say 95 percent of people have procrastinated their tasks and works at least once in a lifetime. If you’re procrastinating a specific task for some higher priority task or reason, then procrastination isn’t that bad. But, if you’re a chronic procrastinator and you know all the tasks you have in your to-do-list are equally important and still keep putting it off, then my friend you need some assistance to deal with it.

To be specific, procrastination can’t be confused with laziness, because laziness is all about inactivity and unwillingness to do anything at all, however procrastination is a functional process in which you choose to do something else instead of a particular task that is unpleasant and less interesting which compels you to avoid it for a prolonged time.

Prolonged procrastination can have serious impact on your personal character and nature. You might feel ashamed of yourself, or even lose self-confidence, starting to doubt yourself or even feel depressed. In order to understand the ways to avoid procrastination one has to be very clear about the very reason of procrastinating.

Here are some tips to help you deal with last minute hums and haws.

1. Adopt a positive environment

When you’re working on something or a task, be it your college assignment, an office presentation, school homework or a blogging article make sure you get a positive environment for yourself first, where you feel encouraged and inspired to get your work done with full energy, zest and enthusiasm. Because working on act as you go needs a calm and relaxed mind free of distraction and chaos. You can sit in your cozy garden swing or in your porch if it’s noise free or even your terrace full of planters to get your work done without procrastinating.

2. Organize your space

Every person has his own space, whether you’re a student, an employee, a doctor or even a writer. Your personal space says a lot about your state of mind and your nature, believe it or not. Keeping things organized, neat and tidy is known to have a direct positive impact on your brain which fill it all positive vibe and energy. The more you organize, the less you procrastinate.

3. Stay close to motivators

Have a best pal, or a buddy or even a person who understands you well such as mother, brother or even your wife. Get talking to people who can help you significantly in motivating you with all positive energy and emotions. Motivation helps people a lot who find it hard to focus on their life goals and work in long term. Motivation keeps you going, helping you recharge with positivity and encouragement.

4. De-clutter your mind

Another effective way to avoid procrastination is keeping your mind clutter free. You not only need your place to be organized but also your mind. Keeping your exhausting and exaggerating mind calm and relaxed is very crucial when you need to get your work done, the moment it arrives. A de-clutter mind helps in better focus, management, learning, creative thinking resulting in longer productivity. 

5. Talk about your goals

When you engage yourself with small pep-talks with your best friend or a motivator, make sure you talk about your goals, why you need to do them, why have you been avoiding your high priority tasks for no reason, how important are they to you, how you feel not reaching your goals? All this goal talking, inspires you more to finish your tasks right away that have been keeping aside from a quite long time. 

6. Forgive yourself 

You need to understand yourself when you’re a chronic procrastinator. There are many reasons of procrastinating, such as boring tasks, or the task is quite unpleasant for you, or you don’t know how to do it, or you doubt yourself with your capabilities, or fear of failure or even fear of success. Whatever is your reason, stop punishing yourself for procrastinating in the past. Forgive for what you’ve already done. Accept it and move on with new hope, courage and positivity with all new goals, timelines and deadlines.

7. Set small goals deadlines

Some people procrastinate because of the massive size of the task. They get scared of the amount of time and effort the task is going to feed on. Before even starting to work on the task, they imagine how much time they are going to invest in it and how exhausting it could be. Hence, their mind drops the idea of working on the tough one rather they jump on to next one which takes lot less effort as well as time. In order to avoid this, one has to set small goals with frequent deadlines in such a way that, one has to just work on small chunks of the task according to the programmed deadline and finish the entire task gradually.

8. Reward yourself for reaching goals

Every time you reach your scheduled goal, make sure you reward yourself with your favorite chocolate chip cookie ice cream or a with watching one episode of “The Witcher” or even going out on a bike ride. However, the last one’s not quite possible in the current pandemic situation. Anyways, the motive is when you reward yourself for completing your tasks you get encouraged and filled with excitement to look forward to more tasks instead of procrastinating, which is an effective way to avoid procrastination.

9. Start with toughest one

Deal with your fear. If you fear from the tough tasks and that’s what holding you from getting things done in the first place, then better fight it. Once you start your day with most tough tasks, gradually you feel a smooth ride of tasks getting done at the end of the day. This not only helps you avoid procrastinating but also increases your productivity.

10. Work on your procrastination pitstops

A notification ping from your Insta, or an push email notification, or a reminder of calling a friend, or any internet distraction can be unfavourable when it comes to focus on your work. You need to stay away from distractions while you work or need to work as it makes hard for you to stay focused and determined to complete your goal. In order to stay undistracted, even if you need to put your cellphone away or shut off all the browser bookmarks and notifications, then do it.

11. Stay committed to no delays

One of the most tough part of this whole beating procrastination is staying committed and determined to your task till you get it done. You have to make up your mind to stay firm on making no delays. Once you skip your task in the first place when it arises, you lose the game. Make sure you finish it right away, before letting it to reach your pending task list.

12. Avoid multitasking

Multitasking can make you feel like a magician or a great juggler but the serious consequences can affect you really worse. You procrastinate, you lose focus, you lose confidence even the efficiency of your skills. If you have a long list of tasks with high priorities and less priorities start from the higher ones and that even tough ones, but one at a time. Avoiding multitasking helps you finish your tasks quite fast with perfectionism which is another effective way to avoid procrastination.

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