Procrastination is always a mindset. If you aren’t prepared with the proper tools on how to handle procrastination, when it rears its ugly, unfortunate, but often present, head, you won’t be able to adjust and deal with it.
You need to have a passion for crushing the procrastination. You have to care that procrastination goes away. You have to want it to NOT be around you. You don’t want to be in the company of procrastination.
To Overcome procrastination you need to have a mission…a goal…a purpose.
Focus on your mission. Get Laser Focused on it! Put it at the forefront of your mind. By focusing more on the mission, you will put less focus on the fact that you are procrastinating on the other issue.
Now…the next step is key to crushing procrastination!
Whatever it is you are putting off….I want you to break it up into 4 smaller sections, segments, or pieces. They don’t have to be perfectly equal sections.
Here’s an example….
You have a PowerPoint that you need to create for a presentation. You’re thinking that your PowerPoint needs to have about 40 slides. Which by the way, is 35 slides too many…but that’s someone else’s domain. Check out Laura Foley and her Cheat Death By PowerPoint for more on that…..but…I digress… Just because you’re expecting 40 slides and you need to break it up into 4 sections doesn’t mean that they all have to be 10 slides. You can break it up into 4 sections like this:
- 6 slides
- 9 slides
- 13 slides
- 12 slides
There’s no perfect way to break this up into 4 sections…just get 4 sections that feel like they will work for you.
Now….focus on section 1. That’s your primary goal right now. In this specific example, you need to get 6 slides done. It’s much easier to get 6 slides done that 40 slides, right?
This process works very well for just about everything you need to do. Take house cleaning for example. You need to vacuum….which we all probably hate to do. Let’s assume that you have a total of 7 rooms (including hallways) in the house. Living room, Hallways, 3 bedrooms, den, office. All of these need to be vacuumed. Most people won’t want to vacuum the living room but not all the other rooms, however if you take the break up approach, you can decide to carry on with the project or chore after you complete the first 1/4 part that you sectioned off. This plays directly into your mindset.