A lot of us who transition from an employee to entrepreneur, will do so slowly over a few years. And in this time period, we work our 9-5 and then work on our new business as a part time gig. It’s a lot of work. And to accomplish our goals we generally use daily to-do lists to manage our time and list out specific tasks.
Does this sound familiar?
Do you also wonder (sometimes) “why even bother?” “will this pay off?”
And how often do you end up putting off items that are already on your to-do list?
Adding them to “tomorrow”.
Help Prevent Procrastination: Urgent Tasks
I have found that planning and trying to do a lot can sometimes be overwhelming. Planning by deciding which tasks to put on our to-do list includes looking at the urgency of each.
Does it have to be done today? Yes = today. No = tomorrow.
And we know, although we may not want to always admit it, that the urgent tasks are either ones we left until the last minute or ones that are unexpected.
We have to deal with urgent first but we really do want to prevent tasks from moving to the urgent status in the first place. As much as possible.
Help reduce number of urgent tasks:
- plan ahead
- be realistic about how much time it takes to complete a task so it’s not constantly deferred to “tomorrow”
- have some buffer in your calendar
- complete what is known so that when the unexpected tasks arrive, you’re in a better position to handle them
Dealing with unexpected urgent tasks, try:
- to remember that there will always be unexpected tasks, so have some buffer
- not to get alarmed
- to calmly re prioritize
Prevent Procrastination: Efficiency
In addition to handling urgent tasks better, it is also important to be efficient. We need to make progress towards a goal and not just be busy all the time with nothing to show for.
If we aren’t making progress we start to ask ourselves questions such as “Why even bother?” “Will this ever pay off?”
Help increase efficiency:
- schedule difficult tasks and tasks requiring a lot of focus when you have the most energy (for me that’s early in the morning)
- prioritize, work and then re prioritize as needed
- avoid known time wasters such and checking email many times throughout the day (I try to stick to 2-3 times each day.)
- assign blocks of time for specific tasks
Stop Procrastination
Dealing with endless fires, i.e. urgent items and not producing quality work both can lead to procrastination. Using some of the techniques above should help prevent procrastination. But what do we do when we are already procrastinating? How do we stop that?
Try the following approach:
- list out the things you planned on doing “tomorrow”
- choose one of those things and do it right now
- choose a specific time, today, to work on your list
- remember doing it less perfectly is better than not doing it because you want perfection
- to keep the momentum going, as you start each item on your list, think about how it will feel once you have completed it
To help prevent procrastination, we must learn to reduce the number of urgent tasks and learn to be more efficient. We also must understand that although we try to prevent procrastination it will still turn up sometimes. And when it does we must try to stop it. If we don’t keep a handle on procrastination, we won’t see progress. And progress is needed to keep us going on this transition from employee to entrepreneur. Otherwise, we start to ask ourselves more and more “what’s the point?”. We don’t want that.
So tell me: do you use any of these techniques? Which works the best for you?
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