www.fastcompany.com: We’ve all experienced the nagging dread and anxiety that accompanies procrastination. Procrastination (avoiding specific tasks) and avoidance (a more general pattern) can also cause problems in relationships, especially if you make a habit of avoiding things or you routinely ask others to do things for you.
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These are all awesome strategies for crushing a to do list and honestly ones I am currently using to finish up the rest of the year and get ready to move house. The one on this list that most people struggle with is the third item wherein you actually just take something off your to do list if it has been hanging around for too long. There are some things you think you need to do right away that actually are not necessary to accomplish right then and there and therefore do no need to be on your active to do list. I also really like number one on this list because I often break up tasks into sub tasks and projects in order to do things more step-wise and have more clear places where it is acceptable to take breaks and pause to do something else. I’m excited to try out some of these other strategies moving forward to see how that affects my progress as well.
I had low expectations for this article. I thought it would be riddled with dumb mindset things or stupid strategies that would work once and you’d forget, but I was wrong. I have heard some of these strategies before, some verbatim, some a variation, but they all seem to work. The biggest thing for me is breaking things down to be smaller, more manageable tasks. If there is an item on your list that says “write 10 page research essay” you’ll probably get overwhelmed and avoid it. Now, if instead you say read two articles and take notes, and then the next step, that is way more manageable. I also liked the suggestion to check if rules you made for yourself are true. Certainly I say, I can’t work on this until I finish this other thing, or I trick myself into thinking there is a critical path type reason why I can’t do something. I need to un-trick myself and work efficiently.
I read this article on procrastination and avoidance because I kept getting distracted from these very comments and I knew I could write this very sentence and get some progress in completing this very assignment. This article has come good points, ones that I usually forget to follow once I hit the end of the year and my schedule is so all over the place. Which feeds into my avoidance and procrastination which just makes me feel even worse and like I wasted time. Boosting someone else and encoring them to do things on their to-do list I think is the most helpful thing to get me working on my list. Because humans are social creatures, we love spending time with good friends, which can bring in avoidance if neither of you are working, but if one person decides to work, or one person encourages the other to work, you start to use that heard mentality to your advantage and things get done. And then when you get that one task over you can celebrate and have the rest of the day to yourself.
It's funny that I choose this article of all things to write about as I have been procrastinating these comments almost all semester and the last set is no different as I am doing them yet again at the last minute. This article is something that has a lot of good techniques and ideas for how to deal with procrastination and how to best go off your checklist and get everything done on time. I am someone who is a big proponent of checklists and have been for awhile but I can't ever seem to quite prioritize or order them correctly when their isn't a clear order in which to do things. Most of the time I just look at what has to be done first what either has to be done for the other things to start or what has the latest deadline and I can put off until the very last minute.
In highschool, one of the things that my academic advisor once brought up was how, are you impeding your own learn? In other words, how can you improve the way that you participate in classes and in managing your time. That was a huge idea for me to realize that if your barriers are self inflicted then you can overcome them. Even though I still procrastinate and avoidance I have definitely gotten better at facing things I don’t want to do. While I already used a couple of these strategies I really liked seeing the full list laid out.It has a lot to do with your mentality going into a project, and whether or not I think I can actually complete or want to do the project. Also even though its not mentioned in the article, starting something when you get it or even making small amounts of progress can be productive.
Hey, woah did I need this! Guess what I'm doing right now? Avoiding homework that needs to get done by doing this! (I mean, this needs to get done too, but it's way lower stress and has a much farther away due date. Anyway, starting off the bat with tip #1... yes, I think this is the biggest problem I'm facing right now. I've really reworked my planning/to-do strategies and format, but it definitely could use some fine-tuning. Something I'm having a hard time getting past is having big projects as just one line to cross off in my to-do list. I am currently really functioning on a "I need to cross things off" mentality, and long-term projects can make me feel really unmotivated and dejected because even if I work for hours, get so much done all day, but not have anything to cross off, it feels like I did nothing. Breaking each project up into a list of smaller tasks will definitely be a big step in helping me overcome that, I think.
I always get this idea that “motivation” is one day going to come out of the woodwork, smack me in the face, and then I’ll be productive forever. I’m still waiting on that. In the meantime, I’ve come to at least recognize that action breeds motivation, which then hopefully, turns into a sort of perpetual motion machine, at least for a bit. It doesn’t work the other way around; motivation, like its cousin inspiration, usually doesn’t just come knocking at idle minds. I’ve found that I can to-do list myself to death, but I also need lists in order to structure my time, so the balance comes in knowing the tipping point between helpful and productive list making, and writing lists in order to procrastinate actually doing the things. I think that I’ve been able to find and waver around that balance through trial and error in high school, but the sustainability comes in self assessment, knowing when you’re overdoing it out of avoidance, and when a project actually merits that level of preparation and delineation.
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