A Procrastinator’s Guide to Productivity
Tips and tricks on how to be more productive
I am a self-proclaimed queen of the procrastinators. Give me a task and I can assure you, I’d do it when an anxiety attack is creeping in because it’s almost the end of the deadline.
Cramming together work in a short time-frame is one of my special skills. I could put it on my resume but that might turn off potential employers.
I know from the two paragraphs above, I made it sound light but I don’t really like being a procrastinator. I’ve always admired people who have the discipline to finish their tasks right off the bat.
One thing I don’t like about people in general is when they see a space to improve, or that they acknowledge a toxic trait, especially when it affects them in substantial ways, and they still don’t do anything about.
So in the light of myself being unhypocritical, I’ve made a few changes that radically affected my productivity.
Here’s what I learned on how to be more productive:
Stop being a perfectionist
I tend to fixate on how I can make everything the best of the best and when I can’t do it, I feel like I’ve let myself down and my motivation would always fall along with my productivity.
It’s a cycle I had a hard time breaking; I have to keep reminding myself that sometimes there’s beauty in imperfection and I have to learn to manifest that into something positive.
The time-boxing method
I’ve been a fan of Elon Musk for sometime now. His goals and execution really amaze me, the way he thinks of something and make it happen — especially Tesla and SpaceX.
I wrote about the things I’ve learned from the revolutionary man:
and the time-boxing method is one of them.
Timeboxing, or some might call it time blocking, is the practice of setting a fixed amount of time for each task and integrating the resulting time blocks into your schedule.
To put it simply: Write out your plans in a calendar, app, white board or a paper, depending on what works best for you, without a start and stop, just the amount of time you will allot to the specific task then move on from it.
I’ve personally tried this method and for someone who watches Netflix a lot, blocking a specific amount of time to do specific tasks really helped my focus and productivity.
Do the hard-task-easy-task method
If you’re someone who can come up with all the ways you can procrastinate, this is the method for you.
Some say to do the easy task first, but you’ll end up with the hard tasks later on and probably will suffer with lack of time or motivation.
If you do the hard task first, after you’re done, you would’ve just relaxed and put off the work because all the remaining tasks are ‘easy.’
You probably know where I’m getting at by now: Do one hard task first, then an easy one, then a hard one. Yup, that’s the pattern.
When I do this I feel often relieved when I finish a hard task, it makes the easier task feel like a reward for some reason.
I remind myself of the end goal
In a world where distraction is in every form and present wherever we look, it’s easy to shift to what’s comfortable.
I, myself, get caught up in instant gratification, which is seemingly harmless. What’s a few hours binge-watching Friends for the 9th time right?
But if you sum up all that instant gratification, it equals to a lot of time spent unproductively. Time that could’ve been spent on pursuing your end goal.
When things get hard, when distractions arise, when I feel that I’m stuck, I always look at why I’m doing what I’m doing — for my ultimate end goal.
Procrastinating isn’t something to be taken lightly. It can affect major aspects of our lives, not just the work-related aspect even the seemingly harmless ones.
If you let this toxic trait rule your life, it will have major repercussions.
In my line of work as a full-time freelance writer, it’s very important that I’m a self-starter. Literally the only person who will tell me that I should start writing is myself. I have no one to yell some senses into me.
Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of production. In businesses, it’s important because it translates to more goods and services to consumers thus gaining higher profit.
In a person, productivity is important because it translates to good work ethic thus producing quality work in most, if not all, aspects of our lives.
