ANMOL IRFAN
IT’s an average Wednesday afternoon – arguably my least favourite day of the week. I find myself staring at the laptop screen, rotating between my empty Google doc, half-written emails and multiple research tabs that are all open simultaneously. I quickly catch myself getting overwhelmed with all the pending tasks running through my brain. So I close my laptop and reach for my planner.
This way I’m able to prioritise what needs to be done first and also give my brain a break from the screen, while still maintaining productivity. As a freelancer, I have struggled with procrastination for much of my career, but in the past year it’s something I have actively identified and been working on. I realised that without a boss or an office, I am the only person who can provide the discipline I need to optimise my work time. That’s not to say I’ve developed a foolproof method by any means. It’s still an everyday struggle, and I find myself switching between techniques or methods to keep them more effective. But it’s a start.
Find what works
Finding my solutions started when I identified why I was procrastinating on certain tasks in the first place. I found there were two main drivers to my procrastination. First, I felt a pressure to constantly be available to outside demands, whether they were related to work or not. The other driver was being overwhelmed because my brain wanted to do all of my tasks at the same time.
Time-boxing my tasks, which means allocating a maximum unit of time to a specific task in advance, has really helped in making sure I’m less distracted. Also, having to-do lists and organising schedules according to where a task needs to be done has helped. Organising my time like this helps because if I need to do errands, I’ll group them all together so that I only leave the house once.
Having a morning routine and noting down times next to your to-do list can also be really helpful.
If the root of your procrastination is a constant state of being overwhelmed by having so much going on in your mind, then making a to-do list is like a “release” that helps alleviate the pressure to remember important tasks.
Taking a break
Procrastination has become a bit of a buzzword, and people don’t always look at what’s behind the behaviour. For entrepreneur and performer Em Stroud, what helped was initially figuring out that for the most part, putting off a task was largely due to an underlying fear of what the outcome of that task would be. She manages that in multiple ways, including by breaking up difficult tasks into smaller pieces and tackling them first thing in the morning.
“But rest time can also be critical,” Stroud says. “Dealing with procrastination can also be about meeting yourself with kindness, because sometimes what you’re procrastinating over is hard and what you actually need is to take a break.”
* Edited from article first published by Fast Company US