Your Biggest Enemy is Yourself
I don’t know about you (although, I’m fairly sure) but one of my biggest issues has always been procrastination in business. Personal life “do it now”? Check. Business life “do it now”? Maybe later. 0_0
There are three reasons for procrastination:
1. You don’t want to do something.
2. You don’t know how to do something.
3. You haven’t realistically set a time to do that certain something.
Well…let’s fix this here and now. These days, I’m pretty much known for getting things done (or scheduling time to get said thing done) immediately after I think of doing it. How? I use an alarm system.
And no, that doesn’t mean I have alarms going off every minute of the day. I would pull my hair out! I have a system. 🙂
So, get out your phones and dedicate the next 15 minutes to learning some basic anti-procrastination methods that you can start right way.
Here is what I use:
The Due App (iOS) - For events, due dates and daily tasks. (For android, check out ANY.do . )
Fitbit - There is a GREAT alarm system that I use for waking up, naps and taking a daily walk (not too mention setting the goal for a certain amount of steps per day).
EasilyDo (For iOS and Android) - This is connected straight to your inbox. It pulls tracking numbers, dates, itineraries, weather and more from your emails! It’s been a life savor in hotels and airports on numerous occasions. (Not to mention I love getting a notification that I have a package being delivered…woot!).
OK. Here’s The Rules:
1. If a date or a time comes across your desktop (think meetings, online workshops, events, daily/repeatable tasks, etc.) you immediately put it in your phone (The Due App is my go to here) and file the email away. Don’t trash it! Just file it so that you can find the details later. Enter the event so that an alarm goes off 30-45 minutes before the event is set to occur.
2. I have my alarms set to either silent or vibrate. That way I’m not going nuts with task noises.
3. When an alarm goes off, you HAVE to take an action. You aren’t allowed to turn it off and never look at it again. Your choices are to complete the task and mark it done or snooze the task for a new, realistic time period.
4. Be realistic! Don’t schedule 10 to-do’s in one day. An average day of being productive means accomplishing 4-5 tasks (including meetings/ projects /etc.) Don’t overbook yourself. That’s a great way to wake up, look at your tasks for the day…and find even more ways of putting them off. (PS…and don’t cheat! “Waking Up” can NOT be one your to do items!)
5. When you are creating your lists of daily to-do’s, don’t make them broad. For instance, I am working on a video course right now. My to-do is not “finish or work on video course”. That is vague and non-committal. My action reads “Outline Section 3 of Video Course”. Tomorrow it will read “Outline Section 4 of Video Course”. Breaking larger tasks up into smaller tasks allows you to get more done in one day AND get the final project done in record time.
I hope these tips have helped! Alarms can cut down on the “I’ll do it later” moments and “add it to the list” addendums. Give it a whirl! If these tips don’t quite work for you…I have more where they came from! Be sure to stick around!
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