Procrastination: the cycle we all know too well. You plan to do something in the moment, that moment changes to later, then later changes to tomorrow, and tomorrow changes to never. Before you know it, a week has gone by and the laundry you were going to fold in 10 minutes is still sitting in a ball on your desk chair.
Although everyone procrastinates from time to time and the effects are usually harmless, when you procrastinate everything all the time, things quickly pile up and can leave you feeling overwhelmed and helpless. Here are 5 steps to stop procrastinating before it is too late:
- Make a to-do list:
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As obvious as it may seem, making a to-do list is the first step to curbing procrastination. Sometimes the list of things you have to do seems longer in your head than written down, so mapping out everything that needs to be done can help you calm down and get started.
- Schedule in your “me-time”:
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In my own experience, the typical culprit of procrastination is feeling like I haven’t had enough time for myself before diving into a giant project. A way to mitigate this feeling is to put things you enjoy doing on your to-do list. This way, you’ll feel less like putting things off since you know you’re guaranteed to do something for yourself later on.
- Follow a priority system:
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Not all procrastination is created equally and putting off some tasks versus others can have varying results. Any task that has a strict deadline (especially one that is quickly approaching) should be done before anything else so that when life happens (and it will), the only things that have been put off are things that you can afford to put off.
- Work smarter not harder:
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A to-do list can seem a lot more daunting when there are millions of small things that need to get done. The key to condensing your list without writing things off altogether is to find tasks that can be done at the same time. For example, while doing laundry, try and do anything on your list that can be completed before the washer or dryer goes off.
- If you can, you should:
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It can be tempting to tell yourself that you’ll get it done later, or the familiar, “Just five more minutes,” but this leads you into a pattern of putting things off until you have a dozen things to do in close to no time. If a task can be done in under 10 minutes, do it the moment you think of it, rather than putting it off, so that you can check one thing off your to-do list sooner.
I know it can be overwhelming to break the cycle and get things started once everything has piled up, but hopefully these 5 steps can help you stop procrastinating now – not later!