Procrastination, the habit of putting tasks off to the last possible minute, can be a major problem in both your career and your personal life. Side effects include missed opportunities, frenzied work hours, stress, feeling overwhelmed, resentment and guilt.
This checklist by Dr María Machón includes typical triggers for procrastination, along with possible solutions for each trigger.
When a problem is large or complex and the optimal solution is unclear, here's how to begin making progress towards a solution even though you can’t visualize the entire path.
Do you ever have one of those days when you just can’t seem to find focus?
There are plenty of pitfalls that can distract you from getting your work done. Here we look at 10 ways to ensure you’re set up for success in your home office.
It’s the lack of starting that kills most tasks and projects.
You might think that a loving partner helps keep you on track -- say, when you want to stick to your jogging or concentrate on your studies.
Excuses are lies we tell ourselves to avoid dealing with unpleasant truths. But as long as we buy into those excuses, we can never move past them.
Procrastination is in all of us, and one of the best ways to procrastinate is to do all the busy-work that makes us feel like we’re doing stuff -- while not doing the stuff we know we should be doing.
Life would be grand if we only did what our fleeting hearts wanted to do, each moment of the day. Unfortunately, the laundry, taxes and difficult conversations would never get done.
Sometimes you need to become unbalanced in order to get things done. If you’re working on a book, launching a business or trying to overhaul some part of your life, you can probably relate.
If you don’t know how, learn how. Use that fancy brain that learned how to walk, talk, and read. It’s still capable of further learning, is it not? Of course it is!
Too often we get stuck in inaction -- the quagmire of doubt and perfectionism and distractions and planning that stops us from moving forward.
Trying to resist that late-night tweet or checking your work email again?
Procrastination is a curse, and a costly one. Putting things off leads not only to lost productivity but also to all sorts of hand wringing and regrets and damaged self-esteem. Are we programmed for postponement and delay?
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Some lessons that apply equally to getting buff and to building your business
If you don’t believe you’ll succeed, then some parts of you will resist your goal, and your progress will be frustratingly slow.
Timeboxing is a simple time management technique you can use to take control of your time.
How much of your day is spent doing administrative tasks, and not creating or doing other important work?
We all have days when we’re just not very inspired, when we need passion and creativity breathed into us.
Creativity is often made out to be a nebulous, messy, complicated, difficult thing, and it can be. But it doesn't have to be.
Many of us are good at starting things — it’s the finishing that we need help with.
We all know that if you’re truly passionate about something, productivity becomes largely irrelevant.
There are a lot of people who read self-improvement blogs and books, but never put them into action. Are you one?
It's a huge limiting belief to assume that going faster means you’re doing something wrong and creating too much stress.
Our attention is often pulled in too many directions, leaving us feeling overloaded, distracted, chaotic, spread thinly, without focus. So what can you do?
You know what it's like: No focus, lots of stress, lots of mental exhaustion without really getting anything done.
It’s amazing how many people I talk to who tell me they want to create a new blog, write a book, start a new business, change careers, make something new.
A professor has recently published his magnum opus on the subject of procrastination - and it's only taken him 10 years.