Welcome to Part 4 in Gaetano’s series on procrastination. He’s shown us the causes and possible effects. Now some ways to rid ourselves of this habit.

Procrastination Mini-Series – Procrastination Killers

by Gaetano Caruana

After reviewing what are the causes and effects of procrastination in previous articles in this procrastination mini series, this last article will highlight what are the main procrastination killers.

Productive Environment: Proper lighting, comfortable chair and desk and possibly an inspiring view might help to motivate you to work. Your productive environment must definitely eliminate distractions such as gadgets that you normally play with and unnecessary tools that you currently don’t need.

Public Commitment: This is by far one of the best tips that helped me smash procrastination. By making peers check your progress, you are automatically motivated to work. If you procrastinate you will have to find a decent reason why you have not finished your work.

Think about consequences: Falling behind in team work might be a threat to your job and your career in general. Think about the consequences that your procrastination has on your life and you will see that it will motivate you to get started with your work.

Track Results: Writing goals down is the first step to make them happen. Result tracking will help you to first of all identify whether you have a procrastination problem and how serious it is. Results will clearly show you how much procrastination is keeping you behind. Such thing will motivate you to start working now to stop your procrastination problem.

Result tracking can be done by to do lists. A to do list is a simple list in which you include all the tasks that need your attention. A to do list can be created using pen and paper but can be more efficiently kept organised with to do list software. To do list software provides all the advantages of the traditional pen and paper to do list and much more. To do list software will let you prioritise tasks, sort them, filter through the task list, and modify existing tasks, as well as remind you of pending tasks.

As has been said earlier in this procrastination mini-series, you choose to be a procrastinator. There is no such thing as innate procrastination. I agree, procrastination is not an easy thing to beat but with the right tips and help you can make it, as others did.

Gaetano Caruana writes for the FruitfulTime Blog, where you’ll find the free ebook Stop Procrastination Now.

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Thanks, Gaetano! I really appreciate this series.

–ME “Liz” Strauss