How Can I Stop Procrastinating?
A person at rest tends to stay at rest... A person in motion tends to stay in motion... 
"How can I stop procrastinating?" is a question I've asked myself too many times! I have watched myself procrastinate on some project or goal for weeks and weeks sometimes... And then somehow I get myself in action on that task and all of a sudden it's done... Or I promise I will only work on it for fifteen minutes and three hours go by and I'm still working on it and I don't want to stop. Why the hell did I put it off for three weeks then? It's simple physics... And you can use it to your advantage... How can I stop procrastinating? Make it really easy to get into motion... One of the ways I do that is to break my tasks down into fifteen minute chunks or periods of time...sometimes I'll work on them in twenty or thirty minute chunks even... Once I have figured out how many chunks of time I'm going to need...approximately Then I have an idea of how long it's going to take me to finish the entire project or accomplish the goal... What's interesting is that when I schedule these fifteen to thirty minute chunks of time on my calendar... Sometimes I do my fifteen minutes or thiry minutes and then I stop... But most of the time, I end up doing a lot more than that. I rarely avoid doing it.. I rarely put it off for weeks and weeks... I get a lot more done this way because I know that I can put up with pretty much anything for fifteen minutes... That gets me into action...into motion... And once I'm in action, it's so much easier to stay in motion... This works really well for me for very short term projects and my bigger really long term goals as well... Everything from dusting the living room to mastering the German language...
And while we're on the subject of How Can I Stop Procrastinating... If you've got a question or something to say about "How Can I Stop Procrastinating" or anything else, you can talk about it here... Or just read what everyone else has said... Or you can introduce yourself to the Thought Detective community! And tell us a little bit about you, where you are living, how you got there or anything you'd like to tell us about yourself here...
Looking forward to hearing from you... Suzanne
Go from "How Can I stop Procrastinating?" to "Getting Things Done" Go to the Thought Detective home page

|