Building Success Personality - Six Ways to Put Off Procrastination

Copyright (c) 2009 Khadijah Ibrahim

When I analysed people's handwriting, the most common trait that I found in almost 70 per cent of the handwriting samples were procrastination trait. To me it is a big concern because when this trait is part of your habits, it is hard for you to achieve success.

The reason is that procrastination prevents you from doing things you are supposed to do whether it is something small or something very important. When you do not do the things that are supposed to be done you are actually taking one step backward, away from the success.

There were many reasons why people procrastinated e.g., they were not confident that they could do a good job or even simply because there was an instant gratification that allured them from doing the job such as watching their favourite show.

I hope that you should realise by now that usually procrastination or putting off doing the supposed to do things would lead to more harm and would jeopardize your opportunity for success.

There are many ways to put off procrastination and I am going to list down six most important ones.

Admit that you have a procrastination habit

The first thing you have to do to eliminate procrastination is to admit to yourself that you have this habit in you. When you admit to yourself that you like to put-off doing things, it would make the process of eliminating this habit easier.

You will not change or take the step to eliminate procrastination if you do not believe you have the habit even if all the people around you agree that you normally put off doing things a lot.

Make plan

Make a monthly followed by weekly and then daily plan of the things that need to be done.

The daily plan should be made at night before you go to sleep so that you could immediately start your tasks in the morning. Make a commitment to complete all the tasks scheduled, on time.

If the task is too big, chunk it into smaller achievable tasks. Always put the plan in front of you as a reminder of what needs to be completed.

Do the difficult task first

Some people said that doing the easy task first would make you motivated to do the difficult one later. There were also people who said that doing the difficult task first would make the other tasks that needed to be completed after that easier. I would have to agree with the latter.

The reason I agree with the latter is that if you put off the difficult task until the end of the day you may not have enough time or even energy to complete it on the same scheduled day. As a result you will have to reschedule this task to the next day meaning that you will disrupt the next day's schedule. This is how procrastination begins.

When you plan to do something, do it and commit to complete the task within the specified time. If you find it difficult to complete the task by yourself maybe you should start to consider asking other people for help.

Ask help someone to monitor you

In the beginning you could ask someone close to you or someone you trust to monitor you on a daily basis to confirm that you have completed the task that has been planned. You could ask them to do it at the end of each day or at least every three days. Better yet have someone you respect to monitor you so that you would feel embarrassed if the task is not complete.

As mentioned earlier you could consider asking other people for help or assistance when you are not able to perform the task by yourself. Who knows there are possibilities that the people you ask for help could do a better job than you.

Review the plan

Every night before going to sleep review your plan to ensure all the tasks scheduled have been completed. If there are tasks that could not completed, put down the reason why and put the task into the next day plan or reschedule it to a more appropriate day. Think of an alternative way to complete the task.

Maybe the truth is that the task could not be completed in one day. Therefore you could start chunking the task into small achievable chunks that could be completed in one day.

Reward yourself after you achieve the goal

Reward yourself after achieving the goal is one of the most important things people normally forget to do. The reward does not have to be a big reward. Reward yourself with something you like to do or something you really want for example dinner at your favourite restaurant.

The reward will give you something to look forward to when you achieve your goal. The reward will be something like a catalyst or motivation for you to complete the goal on time.

However do not go overboard in rewarding yourself. There were people who rewarded themselves even before they completed their goal where they enjoyed the reward so much that in the end they did not achieve their goal.

With six ways to put-off procrastination being revealed in front of you, all you have to do now is take action. In no time you realise that procrastination habit that you have is the thing of the past.

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