Stop Procrastinating – 4 Tips to Help You Get Things Done

gainpro f it inco m e .co m

http://www.gainpro fitinco me.co m/sto p-pro crastinating/

Stop Procrastinating – 4 Tips to Help You Get Things Done Philip A.

Have you ever had a task that you would postpone days on end? Well, I know I had, and quite f rankly more of ten than I would like to admit. Just a couple of days ago my girlf riend asked me to go with her shopping and I said I can’t, I’m busy working on my blog. But the truth is I wasn’t actually getting anything done, I was just sitting at my laptop and looking at what needed to be done.

T his has happened to me a lot of times and what’s worse about it is that a simple task that could have taken me 1 or 2 hours to complete, ended up wasting all of my day.

Yes I know, I have a huge problem with overcoming procrastination.

In this post I’ll be sharing a couple of tips which I’ve just recently started to put in practice and which have helped in increasing my productivity online.

For me, as f or other people I’m sure it’s important to make the most out of the time we spend working on our websites, social media, creating content, especially if you’re working online only part-time and still need a day job to put f ood on the table.

So let’s do this! Bef ore I decide to write this post next week.:)

1. Focus on St art ing not on Finishing T hink about when you’re trying to push a car. T he hardest part would be to just get the wheels rolling. At f irst this would seem like a dif f icult task overall, but if you f ocus all your energy to get it moving, the momentum will make everything else a lot easier.

If you f ocus too much on f inishing a project, whether it’s a blog post, or website, you can sometimes become overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done and bef ore you know it you decide to do it another day.

Whenever I’m writing a blog post all my concentration goes into creating the f irst paragraph. Because once I have that written down, everything else f lows easily.

What I do, is write the f irst paragraph in Notepad, so I’m not distracted by anything, and then once I’m happy with it I copy/paste it into my WP editor and take a 5 minute break. T his is something I’ve been doing f or the last month now and I can def initely notice that the time I spend on writing posts has decreased. Bef ore this, it took me up to 2-3 days to f inish a post.

Now, this strategy can be applied to whatever project or task you might have. All you need to remember is

too f ocus on the immediate action. If you’re just starting f ocus on completing the f irst step of the process.

And then the second step, and so on.

2. Avoid Inf ormat ion Overwhelm With all the f ree inf ormation that’s available online, all the tutorials, all the ebooks, all the guides, it’s very easy to become overwhelmed and lose track of what you should do to improve your online business.

Sometimes you just got to stop reading and start taking action.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you need to stop learning, f or me learning is the biggest investment you can make to improve yourself as a blogger and as an online marketer.

T he key to not getting overwhelmed by inf ormation which can lead you to procrastinate or worst quit all together is to only learn what you can immediately apply to your business.

So next time you see an email telling you to read that blog post or check out an ebook or a course, ask yourself “Is this information going to help me with what I need to do right now?”. If not, then don’t read it, you won’t lose anything except valuable time which could be spent on things that apply to what your doing right now.

Trust me I’ve made this mistake, not once, but lots of times, and I can tell you that overwhelming yourself with inf ormation that does not apply to what your doing right now will only give you an excuse to avoid doing what you actually need to do.

3. Aim f or Progress not Perf ect ion “If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.” Leo Tolstoy Tweet this

One of the things that lead me to postpone tasks and procrastinate was that if I couldn’t f inish a blog post or setup a site that day I wouldn’t start at all. And this points back to the f irst tip, f ocusing on starting and not on f inishing.

Sometimes we say “Oh no, I won’t be able to f inish this today, I better leave it f or tomorrow”. And tomorrow something else might come up and the thing you wanted to take care of ends up being pushed back.

When I started commenting on other blogs I said I would leave 10 comments each day. But there where days when I was so busy that I didn’t have the time to leave 10 comments. I told my self , I’ll leave 20 comments tomorrow. And tomorrow came and sure enough I didn’t have the time to leave 20 comments, and so on I kept postponing this.

Instead of putting something of f because you don’t have time to f inish it, try getting at least “x” amount of work done. If I can’t leave 10 comments today, f ine I’ll leave only 5, but I’m getting some work done.

If you wait until something is perf ect, you will wait f orever. What seems perf ect f or me, might not be that perf ect f or you.

If you’re working on a course or an ebook or maybe a simple tutorial video, stop asking yourself what if this or what if that, just put it out there, it might not be perf ect f or you but maybe that’s exactly what people were looking f or.

4. Hold Yourself Account able Holding yourself accountable f or your actions is another way you can avoid procrastination.

What I suggest is to f ind a community within your niche and partner up with other people. Set up challenges f or each other that have rewards and consequences.

For example Darren Rowse f rom Problogger.net creates group writing projects f or his readers. T he winner always get’s a reward prize, and having a little competition will always provide you with that little extra motivation to get things done.

You can f orm a Facebook group or a Google+ community where you share your goals with the other members and report each thing you have accomplished.

If everyone in the community shares their breakthroughs it will def initely motivate you to work harder so that you have something to share with your community.

I’m sure you’ve experienced how a little competition can motivate you to f inish projects f aster, so I why not put yourself in that position once in a while.

Takeaway Let’s do a quick recap of the 4 steps that can help you overcome procrastination.

1. Focus on starting, not on finishing.

2. Avoid information overwhelm.

3. Aim for progress, not perfection.

4. Hold yourself accountable.

If at least one of these tips has stuck with you then I’ve managed to do a good job with this post.

And if you know other strategies that have helped you overcome procrastination please share them in your comments. I’d love to hear all about it. .