‘I am very busy doing things I don’t need to do in order to avoid doing anything I am actually supposed to be doing.’
It all starts with a single term Procrastination. As explained by Merriam-Webster it suggests, “Delaying doing something until a later time because you do not want to do it, because you are lazy, etc.” The connection between present and the success in future is the execution of work. In order to cross a barrier, why do we try to find out ways to cross? The answer is obvious, to reach the other side. We human are bound to figure out smart cuts, hacks, and shortcuts when it comes to figuring out ways to reach the other side. It arrives in us as a part of inbuilt DNA of entrepreneur in our genetics. When we finally decide that now it is the correct time to do the work, the challenge eagerly waits at the doorstep, and the name of this challenge, troll, or whatever you consider it. The name is Procrastination at work, the ultimate Godfather of all lazy hoi polloi’s. Instead of guiding you towards the straight path of work through a safer passage, this challenge will guide you towards chatting with your friends of Facebook, re-tweeting famous sarcastic tweets over Twitter, posting Selfies over Instagram, and what not? This evil term fills your entire time with the task you love and enjoy spending time at, rather than the task you should be actually doing. It always comes with procrastination and choice, it solely depends upon you whether to use procrastination at work or stick to your actual work and finish it within the time limit. The main question is how do we recalibrate, or trick our mindsets into a definite perspective of completing everything at a right time instead of casually postponing it for later? Here are few effective choices that according to The HR Digest can easily help you in order to avoid procrastination at work.
Start working on a project bit by bit each day!
If you have been assigned with a certain project in a time limit that is a bit longer, instead of postponing it in order to complete the whole project just a day before the initial deadline, you can start working on the assigned project bit by bit every day. It will provide you with a great amount of time to explore and execute new ideas, and it will be a comfortable way for you rather than rushing a day before a deadline. Always a work done with a peaceful and serene mind is excellent, satisfying, impressive, and perfect.
Make small divisions of an assigned project!
Instead of jumping upon an entire massive assignment, break your assignment into smaller concrete executions. The smaller executions will help you to keep your mind clear task and it will avoid the feeling of procrastination coming your way. We are humans, and we have all rights to be lazy sometimes. According to psychology, smaller concrete parts are highly recommended instead of working on a big bulged assignment. If you notice a larger project, which is time-consuming, according to the human nature of most of the people, you are more obvious to feel lazy and push it for the next hour and continue repeating the cycle, which will eventually result in procrastination at work. So, it’s better to divide your work into smaller divisions and start sorting it out parts by parts.
Establish Liability & Deadline!
Establishing accountability for a certain task in front of people, be it your family, peers, friends, or anyone will give you a sense of liability. Fear the consequences of what might happen if you didn’t emerge out as a liable person in the front of people you promised certain tasks. This will not let laziness engulf you. Make deadlines and plan your work accordingly to finish before the end limit. Drafting deadlines and finishing a task before that line is a high sense of professionalism and it will hinder procrastination from reaching you.
In an excellent article in New Yorker about this evil keeping us from doing our actual work, writer James Surowiecki elucidates, “Our memory for the intensity of visceral rewards is deficient: when we put off preparing for that meeting by telling ourselves that we’ll do it tomorrow, we fail to take into account that tomorrow the temptation to put off work will be just as strong.”
So stop procrastination at work, start working on your actual assignment, rather than wasting your precious time, because, if we start pushing everything on tomorrow, the reality will hard, when tomorrow will become today, our whole perspective will change. Read more from the author at The HR Digest: PROFESSIONALISM, ROLLING OUT HUMOR AT WORKPLACE