We’ve all been there before. You wake up in the morning and no matter what you do, you cannot get your day started. You turn on Netflix or Youtube and watch the clock as you repeat to yourself, “I’ll get to work in 15 minutes” over and and over until the day is over. It happens, but if it’s happening often something needs to change! You need to get up and start conquering the world.
But you might be asking us how? How can you beat procrastination? Luckily, your neighbourhood Sherwood Park Athletic Testing and Development team, Competitive Thread, is here to give you a lesson in beating procrastination.
First thing you need to do is start with something small. When you look at a task you have to do, like writing a paper, going to the gym, or whatever it is, you don’t want to think about the entire task at hand as a huge mountain. You want to think to yourself, I’ll just go to the gym and do 10 minutes, then I can leave if I want. Or if it’s a paper, i’ll just write the first sentence, then if that goes smoothly, then try and write a paragraph. Start small, then work your way up. You just need to start, and once you do, you’ll find it wasn’t as hard or devastating as you thought it might be.
Next, you’re going to want to set realistic deadlines and goals. Sometimes creative types like to think that deadlines and goals are too rigid and and ruin the creative process, but that’s not true at all. They force you to get started and get active, because you set a deadline and you want to succeed. Having too loose of a deadline means you never need to start. The same goes for sports or work, you need a deadline because you need to begin. But make these deadlines and goals realistic, or you might feel like your load is too heavy and crash and burn.
The next thing you have to know about procrastination is that starting is better than doing nothing at all. You might want to go to the gym, but because you don’t feel like getting a complete monster work out, you decide not go, and thus you don’t complete your goal for the day. But remember, getting something done is better than getting something done perfect. Tomorrow, you’ll wish you went for just a little bit.
Be positive. Don’t get yourself down with failure or procrastination. Don’t sit there and berate yourself because you missed a deadline. Just take it as a learning experience and do better the next time. Negativity can spiral out of control until your wallowing in self-pity doing nothing.
Block out distractions! Have you ever been about to leave for the gym, when all a sudden something on your television catches your eye and it’s 4 hours later and you’re still at home? Block out those distractions! Stay focused on the goal at hand. That means turn your phone off and concentrate!
Last, write down your progress! Having a progress report, (self-plug: like the database we use in our testing and development camps) is incredibly important to seeing incremental progress and motivating you to keep moving forward! When you can see how far you’ve come, it inspires you to go that much further.
Hopefully these few tips will help you defeat that all too familiar feeling or procrastination! Now get out there and start working!
