Stop Procrastinating

All of us seem to be guilty of procrastinating one time or another, right? There are times when we just feel that we can do it later, and then later becomes tomorrow, and then tomorrow eventually becomes never!

A lot of important things are left undone thanks to the venom of procrastination. Most people who become victimized by procrastination are those who can’t seem to prioritize their list of things to do.

Procrastinating can seem to be harmless at first, but in the long run, it will truly affect your performance, your career, your family life, your social life, and other aspects of your life. A lot of people have fallen for the devious trap of procrastination, thinking that they can do it “later” only to find out that it is like a vice that becomes a hard habit to break.

Don’t Make It a Habit

If you haven’t been procrastinating until just recently, you can still rescue yourself from falling deeper into the trap of procrastination. As much as possible, don’t make it a habit because you will only be the one who will suffer from that habit in the long run. A lot of things will be left undone and sooner or later, you will notice that your list of things to do becomes longer and longer and eventually, endless!

Anti-Procrastination Tips

For you to combat the urge to procrastinate, you can try these few sensible tips:

Do you know the famous line “Just do it”? Well, it is very applicable to procrastinators. Do not make excuses as to why you can’t do a task right away. Instead of wasting time thinking of a lousy excuse, why don’t you start doing your task? The sooner you take action, the sooner you will accomplish something.

It just takes a matter of determination and motivation. For you to overcome the urge to procrastinate, you have to be pro-active. Put in your mind that nobody becomes successful just by lying or sitting around lazily.

If you have something that is really needed to be done, get rid or move away from things that may distract you. Remember, concentration and focus is the key. If you just set your mind in finishing a certain task, you will surely end up accomplishing it successfully.

Always remember that time is precious and every minute you spend being lazy is already considered as wasted time.

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Practical Steps for Professional Growth Development

Professional growth is essential for everyone. Your quality and status of life depends on you position in your profession and financial income. Your professional growth plan would lead you to the position and income you desire so as to fulfill the dreams of your life.

Your professional growth development depends upon these factors: Your ambition, your drive, your abilities and your interests.

You should have a clear-cut idea about these factors so that your path towards your future becomes clearer to you. Your professional growth plans need not be complicated but you could write down simple but detailed plans so that you could eventually achieve them in time.

Here are a few tips to map out your professional growth plan:

1. Take responsibility and be in charge of your professional growth - Do not rely on others to map out your career plans. If you have a mentor or a manager to support do not hesitate to take advantage of it. But otherwise you would be better off scheduling and planning your own growth in order to reach the top.

2. Write a list of different ways you want to grow - If you would like to stay on with the current employer and plan to grow with the company you could look for skills you need to beef up. Check you performance reviews, feedback from management and peers, any appreciation letters, awards, etc. These are some inputs that could reveal your strengths and weakness. Whether you plan to change careers or go up the ladder in the same career find someone who has treaded the path before you and ask them for advice. Focus on one or two areas on improving at one time. Learn to grow slowly and steadily so that you could win the race.

3. Explore your options open before you, to learn and grow - Research your scope and options open before you. Check around the various educational opportunities, training opportunities, etc. that would help you to grow personally and professionally. Time management, leadership development and team building skills, etc. are essential for corporate promotions. Your social skills also develop along these lines.

4. Identify suitable options that fit your needs and learning style - Each one of us is unique. We all learn in different ways at different pace. Once you explore the learning options before you, consider the methods that best suit you –

Do you like interacting with others? Do you prefer to listen to classroom lectures? Are you a self-learner who learns by reading books? Are you a self-motivator? Do you have time needed to attend regular classes? How much could you spend on these programs? Does your company support your interests by paying for them? These are important points to explore.

Do not procrastinate and get started - The biggest and the most common barrier to development is procrastination. We all plan and talk about our plans. But only a few stick to their plans and start off at the planned time in a planned manner. What good is it if you just plan and do not take steps to execute your plans? If you do not start, you would never succeed in your professional growth development. So start now. I know people say its hard to change, but what are the alternatives….

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The Key to a Better Life

Time management is basically about being focused. The Pareto Principle also known as the ‘80:20 Rule’ states that 80% of efforts that are not time managed or unfocused generates only 20% of the desired output. However, 80% of the desired output can be generated using only 20% of a well time managed effort. Although the ratio ‘80:20′ is only arbitrary, it is used to put emphasis on how much is lost or how much can be gained with time management.

Some people view time management as a list of rules that involves scheduling of appointments, goal settings, thorough planning, creating things to do lists and prioritizing. These are the core basics of time management that should be understood to develop an efficient personal time management skill. These basic skills can be fine tuned further to include the finer points of each skill that can give you that extra reserve to make the results you desire.

But there is more skills involved in time management than the core basics. Skills such as decision making, inherent abilities such as emotional intelligence and critical thinking are also essential to your personal growth.

Personal time management involves everything you do. No matter how big and no matter how small, everything counts. Each new knowledge you acquire, each new advice you consider, each new skill you develop should be taken into consideration.

Having a balanced life-style should be the key result in having personal time management. This is the main aspect that many practitioners of personal time management fail to grasp.

Time management is about getting results, not about being busy.

The six areas that personal time management seeks to improve in anyone’s life are physical, intellectual, social, career, emotional and spiritual.

The physical aspect involves having a healthy body, less stress and fatigue.

The intellectual aspect involves learning and other mental growth activities.

The social aspect involves developing personal or intimate relations and being an active contributor to society.

The career aspect involves school and work.

The emotional aspect involves appropriate feelings and desires and manifesting them.

The spiritual aspect involves a personal quest for meaning.

Thoroughly planning and having a set of things to do list for each of the key areas may not be very practical, but determining which area in your life is not being giving enough attention is part of time management. Each area creates the whole you, if you are ignoring one area then you are ignoring an important part of yourself.

Personal time management should not be so daunting a task. It is a very sensible and reasonable approach in solving problems big or small.

A great way of learning time management and improving your personal life is to follow several basic activities.

One of them is to review your goals whether it be immediate or long-term goals often.

A way to do this is to keep a list that is always accessible to you.

Always determine which task is necessary or not necessary in achieving your goals and which activities are helping you maintain a balanced life style.

Each and everyone of us has a peek time and a time when we slow down, these are our natural cycles. We should be able to tell when to do the difficult tasks when we are the sharpest.

Learning to say “No”. You actually see this advice often. Heed it even if it involves saying the word to family or friends.

Pat yourself at the back or just reward yourself in any manner for an effective time management result.

Try and get the cooperation from people around you who are actually benefiting from your efforts of time management.

Don’t procrastinate. Attend to necessary things immediately.

Have a positive attitude and set yourself up for success. But be realistic in your approach in achieving your goals.

Have a record or journal of all your activities. This will help you get things in their proper perspective.

These are the few steps you initially take in becoming a well rounded individual.

As the say personal time management is the art and science of building a better life.

From the moment you integrate into your life time management skills, you have opened several options that can provide a broad spectrum of solutions to your personal growth. It also creates more doors for opportunities to knock on.

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Tips for Students who Want to Overcome Procrastination

Take this quiz to find out if you-or any students in your family-need to get serious about overcoming procrastination:

Do you put off assignments until the last possible hour because you like to think of yourself as the type of person who works best under pressure?

Do you write down your priorities before you start projects? Do many things seem unimportant when you look at them in the light of these priorities?

Do you ask yourself which of several tasks is the most important one before you rush into an assignment?

Do you concentrate on finishing an assignment when you’re in danger of missing a deadline, rather than complaining that you never have enough time to get your work done?

Do you make sure your friends know when not to disturb you?

Do you turn off the TV and your phone when you need to work on an important assignment?

Do you concentrate completely on what you’re doing now, rather than dwelling on what you did in the past?

When you’ve done the best you can, are you content to wrap up a project and hand it in as it is?-Do you generally make good estimates of how much time it will take to finish an assignment?

If you answered “no” to any of the above questions but the first one (I hope you answered “no” to that one), you can develop better study habits by getting serious about procrastination. Try doing the hardest assignments first. Sandwich a difficult assignment between two of your favorite ones.

Most students dread writing assignments, putting them off to the last possible minute. Writing is one of the most important skills a student can develop. Here are some tips from great writers that can help you conquer the procrastination monster:

Winston Churchill wrote about 5 million words in his lifetime. That’s the equivalent of ten thousand 500-word articles, so he must have enjoyed writing very much. And he wrote well-well enough to win a Nobel Prize for literature. Churchill once said: “When you’re going through Hell, keep going.” To paraphrase that advice for all students struggling with a writing assignment: When you don’t know what to write, keep writing.

Don’t be a bleeder. (Journalists who agonize over every word they write are known in their profession as “bleeders.”) The faster you write, the more you’ll enjoy writing. Jack London, one of my favorite writers when I was a student, said that “you can’t wait for inspiration; you have to go after it with a club.”

Another Nobel Prize Laureate, John Steinbeck, said: “Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.” In other words, rewriting before you finish a first draft is an excuse for procrastination.

Remember Live Your Life By Choice Not By Chance.

Tired of Putting Things Off? - Put an End to Procrastination Today

I’ve been planning to write a novel for the last twenty years. I keep putting it off. Best-selling author John Grisham wrote his first novel while working full-time as an attorney; he was as busy as the rest of us, but he found a way to accomplish his dream. How did he do it? He beat procrastination by forcing himself to get up earlier every morning so he could work on his book before he went to work.

Take this quiz to find out if you need to put an end to procrastination:

Do you write down your priorities? Do some things seem less urgent when you look at them in the light of your priorities?

Do you ask yourself which of several tasks is the most important one before you decide what task to tackle next?

Do you accept full responsibility for missing a deadline, rather than blaming it on forces beyond your control?

Do you focus on finishing a job on time, rather than looking for excuses to explain why you’re going to miss another deadline?

Do you make sure people know when not to disturb you?

Do you have a habit of turning off the phone when you need to concentrate completely on a job? Do you focus on the job at hand, rather than fretting over what went wrong in the past?

When you’ve done your best, do you know when to wrap up a project?-Do you feel that spending more time on it will only keep you from starting your next job?

If you answered “yes” to all of the above questions, congratulations-you’re in John Grisham’s league. If you answered “no” to any of the above questions, pick one and make a commitment to do something about it today. Ask yourself if you have really considered all the consequences of procrastination. Do you want to live with them forever? Do you have a legitimate reason for postponing jobs? And after thinking about these questions, ask yourself if you delay tasks for justifiable reasons-or if you just make excuses to procrastinate. Here’s what I’ve learned to do:

Always remind yourself that you have as much time as people who do great things.

Make your best estimate of how much time a task will take.

Write an inspirational phrase on a 3 x 5 card and use it whenever the procrastination monster pops up.

Shakespeare said, “Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried.” You’ve taken the first step to defeat procrastination by reading this article; now take the next step and tackle a job you know you should have started a long time ago. I took my next step this morning-I got up earlier than usual to start my novel.