How to Overcome Procrastination Part 3

Here is the continuation to the post of How to Overcome Procrastination Parts 1, 2:

Another time management technique is to break down tasks into time chunks.

In the office or at home, you might find that filing papers is one of those put off tasks that you leave and leave and leave.

Allocate an hour for filing. Find as many of the bank statements as possible and file those in date order. Don’t worry that you won’t file all of them. You can allocate another hour for another day to finish it off. You will be gradually dealing with this task and it will be less of a problem.

Or, allocate an hour for working out how much money you are paying out each month and each year.

Another day, allocate an hour for working out what expenditure is essential and what is not.

Just divide each job into a time chunk. This is called time boxing.

These are methods of planning time and tasks to make them appear, and to actually be, more manageable. These work for people who just need to get themselves more organized. These work for very busy people who are very successful, as well as for the rest of us who still just always have things we don’t want to do but know we have to do them.

These methods work for people who, while experiencing a degree of anxiety or fear about not doing so well on some tasks, understand that acknowledging the fear goes some way toward working through their tendency to procrastinate.

For some people however, it is almost impossible to use these or other methods of dealing with their procrastination.

Some people have such deep rooted reasons for not doing things that it can destroy their lives. These are people who really need help to establish what lies underneath their failure to organize their lives.

If you understand that you have an emotional reaction to something, and that as a consequence you defer doing it, then you can also work out that you need to try and overcome that fear. If you can establish that your life will be much happier, and easier, if you can deal with something, then you are on the road to getting over the problem.

However, if you are overly worried about doing everything to a perfect standard, this can freeze you and stop you doing something.

If you feel unable to take control of your life because, underneath your competent exterior are subconscious difficulties surrounding the issue of control, you will probably need some professional help to deal with it.

Lack of self confidence and self esteem can lead to difficulties in managing life’s challenges. Consider whether or not you are asking too much of yourself or, conversely, not asking enough.

Try some of the many techniques to improve your self esteem. If you have become used to being told you are dull, dumb or stupid, you may be believing people who just don’t have your interest at heart, or who may be jealous of you, or just enjoy bullying you.

Building self confidence and self respect is a start to self determination. This doesn’t mean you are suddenly going to be good at everything you turn your hand to.

However, self confidence is about establishing that you can deal with things not always going right, and cope with things that are problematic, in a calm and rational way.

So self confidence should help you accept that, while something may present itself as difficult, and demanding, you can think about it calmly and work though how and where to start.

Think about how you want your life to be. Do you want your life to be chaotic, disorganized, and a series of crises, one after the other? No, of course you don’t.

Do you want your life to be enjoyable, and worry free as far as is possible? Yes, of course you do.

So when each scary task presents itself as something you would rather not do, and would love to just wish it away, think instead of the feeling of control you will have when you have dealt with that scary thing. Think about how you will have more time to do more pleasurable things, if you get those unpleasant jobs all done.