How to Stop Procrastination

How to Stop procrastination is crucial, and your future self will thank you.

Your future self will thank you because procrastinators often suffer. Their happiness may be diminished, their relationships can be strained, and their health can be ignored. These factors may result in higher stress levels, struggling finances, and reduced opportunities.

"While we waste our time hesitating and postponing, life is slipping away."

-- Seneca

In this article, multiple strategies to stop procrastination are provided. These include:

• Strategies to lower the commitment to start. These strategies magnify the simplicity of the 'next' action and create momentum to keep going.
• Strategies that focus on the type of procrastination you are and how you fall for your own procrastination pick-up lines.
• Strategies that focus on reducing the number of procrastination escape valves that you might turn to.

Know what you procrastinate on and then lower the commitment to start

People procrastinate about different things. Some about financial matters, leading to unpaid bills, penalties for late payments, and notices threatening disconnection of certain services; others about health matters, such as the exercise program to lose weight always starting the next day. Some people procrastinate about work issues, spending time on email, Facebook, or Twitter instead of starting that project, leaving work at the end of the day without making any progress.

Can you identify the activities or tasks you have procrastinated on? Try to identify the procrastination zones that have caused you the most stress and have had the most significant negative impact on your life?

Sorry to put you through this. Many of these procrastination habits are deep-rooted. Identifying your procrastination zones helps to identify patterns to watch out for.

When you know what you procrastinate on, then consider

• the 3D approach to conquer procrastination.
• the 10-minute rule.

Both these strategies magnify the simplicity of the task in front of you. In addition, it reduces the commitment barrier to starting the action. 

How to Stop procrastination with implementation plans

Many types of procrastinators include:

• the Chicken who is paralyzed by choice;
• the Daredevil who likes the adrenaline rush of a deadline;
• the Pleasure Seeker who believes in the importance of seizing the day;
• the Ostrich who plays it safe; and
• the Perfectionist who is afraid to start.

Each of these procrastinators has different underlying reasons for procrastination. (link to procrastinate)

For example,

• the Daredevil might say to themselves, "I have plenty of time and will work on it tomorrow", or
• the Pleasure Seeker might say, "This is not very interesting or exciting; I will do it tomorrow."

The problem is that tomorrow never comes.

When you hear yourself saying these things, you should recognize that you are about to enter the procrastination zone.

Here I talk about ways to stop falling for your own procrastination excuses.

How to Stop procrastination by knowing your procrastination escape valves

Isn't it odd that some of the things that people do as part of the procrastination process? Some re-organize stacks of papers. Some watch TV, and others may even clean the house!

Social media has created a new way to stay connected with people but also a new way to procrastinate. It's almost like people use this social media to make themselves feel better about not doing what they should be doing! So a critical part of dealing with procrastination is knowing what you turn to.

Here are four things you can do to minimize the chances of technology derailing your ability to get stuff done. 

Strategies on how to stop procrastination

1. Stop procrastination with the 3D approach

When a task seems overwhelming, procrastination follows.  The 3D approach turns you into a success junkie carving out doable steps that build a record of accomplishment and gets more stuff done. Read more....

2. Falling for your own pick-up lines?

You've heard of pick up lines, right? You know.... those cheesy one-liners someone might use to get a date? Well there are also some procrastination pick-up lines. When you hear yourself say your procrastination pick-up lines... watch out. Read more.... 

3. Stop procrastination with a strong why

As Nietzche said "He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how". Having a good reason to do something motivates you whenever you see yourself starting to procrastinate. Read more....

4. Ask yourself one simple question

Dr Timothy Pychyl an expert on procrastination carried out this exercise with his students and he found that when students made the effort to just get started on their stressful, difficult, and unpleasant task that once they got started the task was not as stressful, difficult or as unpleasant. Read more....

5. Turn off and give yourself a chance 

Email, Facebook, Twitter, or just plain old surfing the web all provide an opportunity for the procrastinator to go down a rabbit hole – and when we go down that rabbit hole we spend time that we can’t get back. Read more...

¹ According to a study conducted by the Procrastination Research Group.

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