Procrastinate Less
Impacts: Mind, Health, Home, Work, Money, Community, Time
“Procrastination is the thief of time.” – Edward Young
When you choose to live life strategically you quickly realize that time is the most limited commodity. Achieving goals requires a plan, action, a little luck and most importantly time. Much of our lives is spent doing things that don’t move us forward, but simply help us tread water. Finding ways to spend the time you have more carefully will give you back potentially wasted time.
Sometimes you have to get creative and find ways of catching two birds with one net. When you procrastinate it’s like tossing your net on the ground and wishing the bird into it, which won’t catch you any birds. Procrastination is more than wasting time it’s the complete denial of progress and because it’s mostly in your head it’s an incredibly behavior to overcome.
Confronting yourself and getting things off your mental back burner should become one of your top priorities. As you begin to bring them forward, work through and resolve them you’ll feel an enormous lightening of stress and weight. This very fact should shed a little light on how much these back burner tasks were a burden.
Learning to procrastinate less will propel you forward because you’re not just saving time, you’re saving your peace of mind. You’re removing the cancer lingering suppressed thoughts grow in your mind.
Exercise
- Confront your procrastination. Make a list of the things on your back burner.
- Prioritize the list based on the level of stress these things cause you.
- Post the list somewhere you’ll see it often, on your desk, by your bed, etc. Don’t do this to torture yourself. Do it to remind yourself and help your self feel better because you’re at least being honest with yourself about your back burner projects.
- Work the list from least stressful to most stressful. Build momentum with the easiest stuff.
- Cross items off as you complete them, leave the list up as motivation.
