How to avoid Procrastination?

Posted on June 01, 2022 by Abdulla Mahmood, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.

Procrastination has become a common issue in today’s time when many are juggling with multi-tasking roles in personal and professional lives leading to unnecessarily postponing to take timely action or avoid decision-making.

The reasons for delaying or avoiding an action are many. It can vary from fear, anxiety, stress to lack of energy or motivation and habitual behavior that stops a person from doing something that is ought to be done.

Avoiding procrastination helps a person on so many levels and most importantly getting rid of the guilt of losing time over delayed action that can have a psychological impact on a person.

Let’s look at how to stop a person procrastinate with some simple points mentioned below:

Prioritize: Prioritizing what needs to be done first depending on urgency or importance helps in easing out the pressure while multitasking. This gives you the clarity in how to complete your list of actions.

Responsibility: Owning the responsibility and being accountable to start and finish the task as per expectations is the right attitude towards postponing any work.

Organize: It is best to organize yourself with what needs to be done and by when using a calendar reminders or have post it notes stuck on your laptops, so you need to be on top of your game.

Communicate: When you are feeling overwhelmed by tasks, it is necessary you communicate with concerned person associated with tasks and voice out your concerns or emotions rather than bottling it up.

Respect: It is importance you respect other’s time as much as your time because every time you delay or do not take a timely decision, you also have an impact on some one’s else life.

Action-oriented: There is no use making plans on paper if it is not implemented on timely basis. So all your plans have to be action-oriented with definitive timeline backed with right attitude to ensure you achieve the expected end results.

Save energy: It is essential you manage your energy level so that you can sustain physically to be able to complete the tasks on hand. Once you are burnt out, you will mentally inclined to find excuses to delay or avoid your action.

Trust: Trust yourself to back your skills without worrying about failure and even if you fail, there is experience to gain from such a hiccup in your life journey.

Introspect: Sometimes it is necessary to take a break and introspect within yourself as to why do you procrastinate and this helps in finding answers within and clears your mind that is filled with doubts and apprehensions.

Negate negativity: A negative and toxic environment around you leads to procrastination and it is important you have a positive mindset by trying to negate any kind of negativity.

Avoid abstract goals: There is a big tendency to delay or avoid taking an action if your goals are vague with no clear targets or timeline. It is best to have SMART goals that makes it clear as to when and why actions need to be taken.