How to break the habit of procrastination?

"Procrastination is the thief of time." -edward young, A.D. 1742.

stop a thief

You need to understand why you procrastinate. Try to consider the following factors and see if you can determine which one is the reason why you didn't start or finish your recent work:

Habit:

I had to wait until the last quarter to get more motivation to finish the work.

I'm excited to start working at the last quarter, and I enjoy it.

I won't do anything until the boss urges me again and again, because he urges me again and again to make sure he is serious.

I have so many things to do, so I only focus on those things that are really important.

Attitude:

I don't want to do this job at all.

I will only wait until I feel capable and in the mood to deal with things.

I'd rather do something else.

I lack self-discipline.

Worried:

I don't know if I have the ability to do it.

I don't have enough time to do it.

This work is too arduous. I need help.

What if I fail or fail to finish?

I need to get the information I need before I finish it.

I'm afraid of being criticized or embarrassed.

Different people will delay at different stages. Some people hesitate before starting work because they think it is too difficult. Others began to work, but later they gave up halfway because of enthusiasm and cooling down. Some people, although almost finished, started another job, so the previous work became endless.

The reasons why you didn't start or finish a job can be divided into three categories. Neil fiori wrote in his book "Develop the habit of grasping the present": "Most procrastination problems are caused by three basic factors: I feel that I have met an accident, I am frightened by what I have to do, and I am afraid of failure." But no matter what the reason is, if we can find out the specific reason, it will be easier to find a solution.

If you are not sure why you always procrastinate, you might as well write down what you have to do every half hour for a week. Think carefully about how you use your time. If we see how much time we spend on unimportant things in some important work, the result may surprise us. So, what happened next?

Consider the consequences

If you expect something to be completed, but you don't make the necessary efforts, it will make you feel uneasy. As the expected deadline approaches, you begin to feel stressed and deeply worried. Once these feelings are formed, your creativity may be weakened. At that time, you naturally didn't have the heart to consider or weigh various methods to complete the work. On the contrary, your main concern is to finish the work as soon as possible.

Let's give an example: you are assigned to give a talk on a topic. Just the night before, you sat down and wrote a few words on the paper. However, you haven't set aside enough time to do some research on related topics, so you are just "improvising". If you make more efforts, you may be able to add relevant experience, materials to support your argument, or charts to your speech, so as to help the audience clearly understand the topic under discussion.

Procrastination of work will also lead to another consequence: you can't get real leisure when you should get real leisure. The reason is that we are still worried about unfinished business (it seems that a nagging person has been reminding us).

what can I do?

List things to do. Write down what to do the next day on paper one night in advance. So you won't miss anything. You can also draw a mark next to the completed project to see how your progress is. In addition, you can also write down your expected completion time on the right side of each project. If you want to do a day's to-do list, the estimated time can be calculated in minutes; If the list is a to-do list, the time can be calculated in hours. If you want to prepare the next day's worksheet one night in advance, you must spend some time preparing such a form. Put the calendar in your eyes. Once you accept any appointment or agreement, you should immediately write it down on your calendar.

The next day, when you look at the work to be done that day, you can make up the processing order of each item on the monthly calendar, making it one, two, three, and so on. Some people are in excellent working condition in the morning, while others are in the afternoon or evening. Do the hardest work at your best. In addition, you can do some boring work first, and then do something interesting.

Estimated time. If you are always late and always in a hurry, then you should learn to predict the time. In other words, you need to calculate exactly how long it will take to complete a job. In addition, extra time should be allocated to deal with "accidents". Don't forget to take some time between appointments. You need to estimate the traffic time. You can't end a meeting at 10 in the morning and then attend another meeting immediately, even if the meeting is only held in adjacent rooms, let alone two meetings held in different areas. Leave enough time between the two.

Entrust others. We often do unnecessary things by ourselves. If we want to send an email and someone happens to be going to the post office, we might as well ask him to send it for us.

Divide it into parts. Sometimes we put off a new task because it is too complicated. Why not finish a huge amount of work one by one with a small amount? If we can divide the work into smaller parts and finish them one by one, we will be greatly encouraged to finish the work one by one, thus being pushed to finish the work at another stage.

Interference is expected. Many times we are disturbed by some things-phone calls, visitors, questions, emails and so on. We certainly hope to work efficiently, but we also need to cooperate with those who have their own working hours. If we only care about our own work efficiency, others will interfere with our work halfway, which will make us unhappy. For this reason, interference is predictable. It is necessary to allow accidents to happen every day. Once an emergency happens, you can also deal with it, because you set aside extra time in advance to deal with them.

Reward. When you start planning your work schedule, make sure that you have about 90 minutes to concentrate on your work. Don't neglect the time needed to prepare in advance. After the actual construction, you need to rest for about an hour and a half. If you are in the office, you can temporarily put down your work, stretch your muscles or meditate. If you work outside, you might as well enjoy some refreshments. Reward yourself for your work. -"I see that people can be happy all their lives and often do good deeds, which is great. I also understand that everyone should eat, drink, and have fun from all the hard work. This is a gift from God. " (Ecclesiastes 3: 13)