Are you here because you finally wanted to learn how to stop procrastinating?
We hope so. In fact, you’re probably here because that important deadline is looming over your shoulder.
If you’re like most people who have to do a task you don’t want to do, you will probably procrastinate on it somehow.
This means you’re probably going to push it near its deadline before it gets done. It’s probably going to weigh on your mind, even if subtlely until you finish it.
You may not be consciously thinking about the task that needs to be done, but it still tends to weigh on your mind regardless. Often times you try to mentally suppress it when you know you should do it.
Perhaps every time you say you’ll do it but end up pushing it back, you do something unproductive instead and feel guilty about it. Does that sound about right?
Whether that’s your style or not, procrastination hurts you in some form or another. It’s a problem that can get us in huge trouble.
Procrastination hurts us at work if we procrastinate on an important email, meeting, or phone call. It hurts us at school if we delay studying for an exam and cram for it instead. It hurts us in our daily lives if we put back things that are absolutely necessary that end up causing us unneeded stress and anxiety.
So just imagine how great it would feel if you just got whatever you need to do out of the way — right now!
If you’re reading this article, you have at least shown that you want to stop procrastinating. That’s a critical first step — and fortunately for you, we’re here to give you the kick in the butt you need.
In this article, we will give you the advice you need to stop procrastinating for good. However, it’s up to you to follow through and deliver the results!
The Definition of Procrastination
Before we talk about how to eliminate procrastination, we must first ask: what does it mean to procrastinate?
Merriam-Webster defines procrastination as “to put off intentionally and habitually” — that seems simple enough.
This means that the definition of a procrastinator is one who procrastinates. Again, nothing complicated about that.
All of us have procrastinated at some point in our lives, so by definition, we have all been procrastinators at some point. However, there’s a difference between an occasional procrastinator and a chronic procrastinator, and anything in between.
Being an occasional procrastinator can be a nuisance, especially as you get older and become hopefully more focused on achievement, but being a chronic procrastinator is a terrible affliction to have.
Why Procrastinating is A Terrible Habit
There’s no shame in having procrastinated in the past, but it’s a big problem if we chronically procrastinate on important tasks. Chronic procrastination leads to stagnation, a lack of achievement, low self-esteem, poor health, and even an earlier death!
So as you can see, being a chronic procrastinator is not a good thing. It may seem funny, it may be a common joke, but if you want to accomplish anything in the real world, you must smash your procrastination habits!
Procrastination also causes us to be late, inefficient, stressed, and a lot more. The negative effects of procrastination add up to the point where, in most cases, we honestly aren’t aware of what they are until we actually stop procrastinating.
In fact, some people are such bad procrastinators that they push something off to the final deadline, only to decide at the last minute that they are not going to do it after all. They often justify it by telling themselves it was not an important task in the first place. No matter how they justify it, this type of behavior is very negative.
Has that ever happened to you? The mental stress of procrastinating on a task, followed by never actually doing it is a ridiculous thing to go through. It’s silly to go through the unnecessary mental stress even when you actually end up doing the task.
None of this is necessary and can be avoided with some education and some follow-up action. This is why we have some excellent tips below on how to stop procrastinating.
Now, let’s get started!
Three Highly Actionable Tips on How to Stop Procrastinating Now
Please note that the following methods are easy with a little practice, but they require a strong degree of commitment. You cannot just read about them; you have to do them, and you have to commit them to your actions and lifestyle.
In other words: read about them, do them, then make them a habit immediately. After you’ve tried them for a little while, you’re free to modify them as necessary to see what works for you.
You’ll find that once you do commit to doing these things correctly, they become second nature and will benefit your life immensely.
Without further ado, here are some of our favorite ways to stop procrastinating.
1. Increase Your Commitment and Urgency
There’s no way around it: you have to see a task as urgent, important, or essential to your life in order to truly prioritize it. If you don’t see it as important, you need to kick yourself in the butt (figuratively, but if literally works too, then go for it!) to get yourself started.
Urgency causes you to do things that you would not do otherwise to achieve your goals. A task can either be legitimately urgent, or you can trick your brain into doing making it urgent.
One way to “trick” yourself into making something urgent is to create public pressure on the goal you wish to accomplish. Tell your closest friends or family members that you will accomplish a task by a certain time. Tell them to question you about it during the process, and to grill you even more if you don’t achieve it.
Benjamin Franklin was known for making major press releases on tasks that he had not accomplished yet in order to increase his urgency, and thus his productivity, and it worked! While we don’t necessarily recommend going that far, you can do something similar by following this method, and/or the one below!
2. Develop a Relationship With an Accountability Buddy
This is related to the last tip in many ways.
An “accountability buddy” will personally keep you accountable for your goals on whatever you’re working on.
Ideally, you and your accountability buddy will have many of the same goals, but this is not absolutely necessary. You can either know them in person or online — but either way, you want to at least make voice contact with them at least once a week. More contact is generally better if they are a good accountability buddy.
If you know any good friends who are responsible and meet many of the criteria below, try to make them your accountability buddy.
If you can’t think of any good real-life friends to be accountability buddies with, then you should meet one online.
A good way to meet an accountability buddy online is to find them on a forum on a topic to whatever your goal is. For instance, if you are looking to start a new blog, Google “blogging message boards,” find one you like, and post a topic on it explaining your goals and mention that you want to develop a relationship with someone who will hold you accountable for your goals. Mention that you will do the same for them, and explain the benefits of it if necessary.
Then find a list of people who respond and “interview” them. Once you’ve touched base with them and decided on a few good candidates, you should call them on the phone or via an app. Develop a personal relationship with them and arrange to talk with them at least once a week via apps like Skype or Whatsapp, on the phone, or in person.
It’s very important that you have at least voice contact with them and that they’re not just an online person behind a screen. The human element is essential.
When you’re looking for your accountability buddy, here’s what you should look for:
- Someone who personally cares about their own success.
- Someone that has aspirations for the future and has a plan to achieve their goals.
- Someone who isn’t too nice and will hold your feet to the fire a bit if you fail to accomplish your goals. Think “tough love.”
- Someone who legitimately wants you to do well.
- Someone that you personally get along with.
- Someone who is available to talk to, and can be spoken to at least once a week.
- Someone who provides value to your relationship and can receive value from you.
- Someone who will motivate you to stop procrastinating on your goals.
It sounds like a lot, but you can find them. There are many who will be interested in your success if you can convince them that you are interested in theirs.
You can share a lot with an accountability buddy. They often are going through many of the same struggles you are. Again, they don’t necessarily have to be going for the same goals as you, but it’s generally ideal if they’re doing something similar.
Using the blog example again, if you’re developing a new blog, it’s useful for your accountability buddy to be a blogger too, because your goals and struggles will likely be similar. You could also share your blogging advice while keeping each other accountable.
They may be further along than you are, or vice versa. But regardless of who is more knowledgeable or accomplished, it’s important that you both add value to the relationship.
You may have insight into what they’re doing based off of prior experience with other tasks, or vice versa. Figure out how you can help them and make sure that they are helping you and keeping you honest with your goals.
Even if you have little advice to provide based off of their goals, if you legitimately provide value to them by keeping them accountable for their actions, and vice versa, you’re providing enough value for most people to want to maintain the relationship and prosper together.
Overall, accountability buddies are a powerful way to help you stop procrastinating. Do not underestimate how useful they can be!
If you’re a chronic procrastinator, you may procrastinate doing this as well. The best advice is to just go and do it right now! Think of who in your life would be a great accountability buddy, and if you know nobody, then meet one online with the advice above.
If you develop a relationship like this, you can really surprise yourself with what you can get done!
3. To Stop Procrastinating, Develop a DAILY To-Do List
This is a very simple but important method that must be done properly to be effective.
Either the night before, or immediately when you wake up, use a notepad or any note-taking app to make a brief to-do list for the day. Update your to-do list as the day goes on, crossing off everything that you’ve done already.
Evernote is a free app that will store and organize your notes between two devices (it’s $34.99 a year for the “Plus” plan, which will allow you to have everything stored on as many devices as you desire). You can use any note-taking app as long as you make it a habit to use it every day, but Evernote is our personal favorite due to its low price and ability to share between devices.
The “daily” part of the to-do list is very important because you want to set goals that you can achieve every day. If you have a goal that takes more than one day, break it down into multiple steps.
The keys to this method are:
- Make it a DAILY to-do list. You can make a weekly list as well, but focus on daily first.
- Make SURE your list is somewhere you WILL see it multiple times a day. The front page of your cell phone is a great place to put your to-do list.
- Check off everything that you do when it’s done.
- Set realistic goals you can accomplish in one day. Break a large goal into pieces if it will take more than one day.
- If you couldn’t accomplish everything, push off no more than one task a day to the next day. If you do this, make it a high priority task for the next day so it doesn’t linger on your to-do list and get pushed off daily.
- Include at least one thing you don’t want to do every day (this is very important). Try to do this goal early in the day so you can get it out of the way.
There are many, many variations you can make with your to-do list, but these are the keys for it to work for most people.
You’ll notice that we mentioned that you want to include one task that you don’t want to do each day. Put it on the top of your list to do early in the day, if possible. If it’s a large task, break it into multiple pieces.
Because you’re doing one task you don’t want to do every day, you’re not overwhelming yourself with tasks you don’t want to do all at once. This makes motivation a lot easier, and it really adds up by the end of the week.
If you take this list seriously, this is a very effective way to stop procrastinating!
Another common method is to include at least one easy, one moderate, and one difficult or unwanted task per day. The moderate or “difficult” task could be something as simple as cleaning your apartment if you tend to procrastinate on that. Try to get the hardest stuff out of the way early and the rest of your day will be smooth sailing in comparison.
You can also make an Anti To-Do list, which has been shown to be very helpful psychologically to procrastinators! For more on this method, read our book, which we explain in more detail below.
If you haven’t tried the simple daily to-do list, then you definitely need to try it. It’s simple and effective, and if you follow the keys above and take it seriously, it works.
Want More Tips?
If you found this information helpful, there’s much more to be found in our book The Sexiest Book on Procrastination You’ll Ever Read.
We know the title is funny, but we guarantee that if you want to stop procrastinating, you’ll agree that it is a very sexy book.
It’s a brief read, loaded with a ton of useful information, and it’s only $2.99 for the e-book version!
The tips above are only some of the methods you can learn from that book. You will very likely find something else in this book that will work even better for you.
$2.99 is absolutely nothing to smash your procrastination habits, so why not get started right now?
Think of that $2.99 as the price of invaluable information that will give you the habits you need to make thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of more dollars throughout the course of your life, and eliminate stress.
$2.99 is nothing compared to the incredible value you’ll gain from the productivity you’ll acquire reading The Sexiest Book on Smashing Procrastination You’ll Ever Read, and by applying the principles within.
Conclusion
Whether you purchase the book or not, we hope that this article was a big help to you.
Procrastination is a terrible habit that absolutely must be eliminated. The advice that you found in this article and in our book, if used correctly, is absolutely invaluable information that will help you destroy your procrastination habits forever!
Good luck, procrastinator, and get to work!
