7 Tips to Beating Procrastination

If you’ve found yourself clicking on this blog post I can somewhat guarantee that you too experience procrastination on a regular basis. Don’t worry! As someone who has also, for much of my life, I’m here to help.

Procrastination is defined as that really low vibrational feeling you get when you know you have a hundred things to do but instead you cant help finding yourself sat on the sofa watching another series of friends (personal experience ) or turning off your string of alarms only to find yourself waking up hours later to the sounds of your baby ready to get up and out of bed (Also a personal experience).

Procrastination often comes with that dreaded feeling of knowing you should be doing something and if you don’t, you’re going to be more in the shit, but still being unable to engage your brain and your body to actually do the thing.

Procrastination can show up as perfectionism, day dreaming, self-sabotage, wearing the badge of busy and even by telling ourself that we work well under pressure (Hint: no one needs that kind of stress in our lives, especially a Mum-CEO)

But how can we overcome procrastination?

1. Know that busy isn’t a badge of honour – Its ok to let go of the little things, delegate the things we aren’t good at and only have three things on our to-do list. It doesn’t make you any less of a mum, woman or entrepreneur just because your to do list doesn’t fill an entire A4 page. Make a list of all the things you need to do and get critical. Cross out all the things that don’t have to be done that day/week, then cross out all the things that can be done by someone else. Cross out all the things that take less than 5 minutes to do (If they take less than 5 minutes do them straight away) and you should be left with a smaller list. Then when your starting out only write a new list with only the things you have to do first (if you still find it overwhelming) – So if you have Write a blog post, upload graphics for blog post, schedule blog post, on your list, only write ‘write blog post’, the rest can be added once you cross out the first.

2. DONE IS BETTER THAN PERFECT remember that! Your waiting all this time making something perfect and not moving the needle forward. Take the messy action, do the thing and jump in headfirst. Your website doesn’t have to be perfect first time, if no ones seeing it you’re not making money (I didn’t publish my website for a year! Because I was making it ‘perfect’ that was a year without people seeing what I do, a year of no one booking discovery sessions. And now I still tweak it so I might as well have just published it when it was first done) messy action is better than no action at all.

3. Structure your day. I found that setting out my day/ week/ month helped show me what I needed to get done, to achieve my big term goals. Have the calendar where you can see it daily reminding you exactly what you must do that day, week, month. (Download my yearly planner)

4. If what you need to do takes less than 5 minutes, don’t write it down, do it when you think of it. If you have a few cups on the side? wash them up, need to vacuum the floor? do it then, if you have to post that content that’s been in your drafts for days? Post It. Don’t add it to the list, it will just cause you overwhelm.

5. If you have a big task, schedule it like you would dinner with a friend. Set a timer for 20 minutes, turn off all other distractions, have a cuppa tea or bottle of wine (No judgement here) and give it a go telling yourself that you only have to do it for 20 minutes then you can do something else. It might not seem like a long time but by the time you get into it you may just want to keep going, and if you don’t, you’d still have done a chunk of the task anyway.

6. The Jar Method - Write your tasks onto small pieces of paper and pop them in a jar. If you’re anything like me, the choice sends me into procrastination, so by doing this and agreeing with myself to do whatever I pick out. You actually get things done. Usually I get things done quicker because I know there is something in there that I really want to do, so the race to find it builds my motivation. Also the physical act of ripping up the paper when I’m finished the task is so satisfying

7. Power Hour -Lastly Schedule time when the kids are in bed, at school or with the grandparents to have a power hour. Like a date, put it in your diary, and plan what you're doing ahead of time. Your future you will be glad you took the little steps.

So these are my tips to beating procrastination, if you're still struggling with motivation book a complementary discovery session with me and we can go through your to do list.