Time Management Blog

Many choices in life involve a trade-off or a balance. When there is not enough time, money or energy to accomplish everything you want to do, you will have to choose your priorities carefully, knowing that each pursuit leaves you less time and fewer resources for another goal or interest. However, in the midst of life’s difficult choices, one decision is very simple from an analytical perspective. Whereas many activities have both positive and negative aspects, procrastination is one activity that consumes your time and energy while contributing nothing to your ultimate quality of life. For this reason, even a small amount of consideration should convince you to eliminate procrastination from your life. Yet this habit is not always easy to break, and even the best intentions to stop procrastinating may not be successful. Some tips, and a little bit of effort, can aid breaking the habit of procrastination, allowing you to spend your time upon more worthwhile pursuits.

One of the skills that can be extremely helpful in ending procrastination is the ability to prioritize. Not all activities are equally weighty, and it is possible to waste time whilst actually appearing to get things done. In order to avoid procrastinating on your most important tasks, it may be helpful to make a list of all the things you want to accomplish this week. Without making any distinctions between important and insignificant tasks, brainstorm a list of a week’s worth of goals. Once you remember you have everything you need written down, either count the items in order of importance from most essential to least necessary, or group the items into high-, medium- and low-priority sections. Try to identify your three most important tasks for the week and list on your calendar the things you will need to do in order to successfully complete them. Then you can focus upon these most important tasks, saving the less weighty ones for the time that is left. Once you have got into the habit of prioritizing your week, move on to prioritizing by month and then by periods of three months.

Another important step in overcoming procrastination is to make sure that you see your ultimate goals in terms of the small steps that you will need to take. By breaking down complicated tasks into manageable stages, each with its own mini-deadline, you will prevent yourself from procrastinating in the belief that your goal is impossible regardless of what you do. In addition, the shorter amounts of time between deadlines will prevent you from procrastinating because a deadline seems so distant that you have all the time in the world. You may find that you are no longer tempted to procrastinate with your important goals when you know what you’ll need to do to accomplish them and exactly how long it will take. Once you have taken these steps to end procrastination, you may find yourself easily accomplishing tasks that once seemed almost impossible.

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The difficulty of certain tasks often provokes a desire to delay or otherwise waste time prior to getting down to business. This impulse to procrastinate can affect people’s lives as an occasional temptation or as a nearly irresistible habit, depending on the temperament of the individual.

In three particular fields of activity, namely college, business and home life, procrastination can cause an especially detrimental effect. A closer look at the underlying factors for procrastination in each of these settings can help illuminate some of the influences in the decision to procrastinate.

For many students, procrastination emerges as a significant problem during the first years of college. The college procrastinator is frequently an individual who, for one of several possible reasons, did not learn effective time management strategies during high school. Frequently accustomed to high school assignments that are strictly short term or that have been broken down into a series of smaller assignments by the senior high teachers, the college procrastinator is at a loss to adjust to college’s long term assignments. In some subjects, the college procrastinator underestimates the difficulty of a term paper or end-of-semester task because the professor does not perpetually prompt the class about the approaching deadline.

For this reason, the difficulties faced by the college procrastinator can be seen as a failure to adjust from a structured, regulated learning environment into an environment where independent time management skills are necessary. Once the need for discipline and organization has been recognized, a few simple tools, such as a day planner, can help the college procrastinator organize a self-structured series of goals and deadlines for long-term assignments.

Whereas the college procrastinator might put off a demanding assignment by playing computer games or socializing, the business procrastinator is frequently more subtle in his or her strategy. Rather than pursuing meaningless amusements, which could be reproved if detected, the business procrastinator often wastes time on activities that are in fact part or his or her job description but that is not the most important tasks at the second.

In some cases, a lack of confidence in the ability to successfully conclude difficult assignments compels the business procrastinator to pursue easy, straightforward insignificant tasks. In other situations, an inability to separate between high- and low-priority assignments causes the business procrastinator to perceive that the uncomplicated tasks are just as essential as the complicated ones, leaving the business postponer no reason to pursue the more troublesome tasks.

To remedy this circumstance, the business procrastinator first must learn to recognize which tasks have the most potential to impact the success of the business itself and to affect the course of business in the long term. Once this has been carried out, the business procrastinator can break down long-run, complicated tasks into a series of administrable deadlines so that they are not quite so overwhelming.

Besides being unable to face a deadline, the home-life procrastinator is often uncomfortable with the never-ending nature of regular home-related tasks. Yard work, home repairs, cleaning and meal preparation can completely assume the uninspiring role of regular inconveniences in a person’s life. Since unfinished chores amass over time, the home-life postponer begins to feel the pressure of housekeeping intruding on the delights of everyday life.

To counter this situation, a specific time should be set aside each week to schedule a reasonable number of weekly chores. By naming which tasks should be accomplished on which day, the home-life procrastinator can gain control over the amount of work. And by restricting certain tasks to certain days, the procrastinator may stop feeling culpable about any unfinished chores provided that he or she has carried out the chores set aside for the current.

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