September 21st, 2008 at 11:47am
Under Uncategorized
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. A few tips, and a smallish bit of effort, can help stop the habit of procrastination, allowing you to spend your time on more worthy pursuits.
One of the skills that can be extremely helpful in ending procrastination is the ability to prioritize. Not all activities are equally crucial, and it is thinkable to waste time while actually appearing to get things finished. 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 believe you have everything you need written down, either numerate the items in order of importance from most important to least necessary, or group the points into high-, medium- and low-priority divisions. 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.
By writer
September 21st, 2008 at 11:47am
Under Uncategorized
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 while an occasional temptation or as a nearly attractive habit, depending on the temperament of the individual.
In three particular areas of activity, namely college, business and home life, procrastination can have an especially detrimental effect. A closer look at the inherent factors for procrastination in each of these settings can help illuminate a few 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 many possible reasons, did not learn efficient time management strategies during high school. Often accustomed to senior high assignments that are strictly short term or that have been broken down into a series of smaller assignments by the high school teachers, the college procrastinator is at a loss to adjust to college’s long term assignments. In some cases, the college procrastinator underestimation of the difficulty from a term paper or end-of-semester project because the professor does not perpetually remind the year about the upcoming deadline.
For this reason, the difficulties faced by the college procrastinator can be regarded as a failure to adjust from a structured, regulated learning surroundings into an environment where independent time management skills are necessary. Once the need for discipline and organization has been recognized, a a couple of simple tools, such as a day planner, can assist the college procrastinator organize a self-structured series of goals and deadlines for long-term assignments.
Whereas the college procrastinator might postpone a difficult assignment by playing computer games or socializing, the business procrastinator is often 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 finish difficult assignments compels the business procrastinator to pursue easy, straightforward minor projects. In different situations, an inability to distinguish between high- and low priority assignments causes the business procrastinator to perceive that the simple jobs are just as crucial as the complex ones, allowing the business procrastinator no reason to follow up on the more difficult jobs.
To remedy this circumstance, the business procrastinator firstly must learn to discern which tasks have the most expected to impact the success of the business itself and to affect the course of business in the long term. Once these has been accomplished, the business procrastinator can manage long-term, complicated tasks into a series of deadlines which are not quite so overpowering.
Instead of being unable to face a deadline, the home-life procrastinator is often ill at ease with the never-ending nature of daily home-related chores. Yard work, home repairs, cleaning and meal preparation can all assume the uninspiring role of routine inconveniences in a person’s life. As undone chores gather over time, the home-life procrastinator begins to experience the pressure of house work trespassing on the pleasures of everyday life.
To counter this situation, a specific time ought 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 limiting certain chores to certain days, the procrastinator can lay off feeling guilty about any incomplete chores provided that he or she has realised the chores set aside for the current.
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