Is Procrastination Destroying Your Career?

By now, you’ve surely realized that running a business isn’t an easy deal. It requires a lot of patience, extreme amounts of hard work and the ability to bounce back from mistakes that are made. One of the things that can’t afford to creep into your mindset is procrastination. You’re constantly busy as a business owner, and managing your time is of the highest importance.

Firstly, you need to determine whether procrastination is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with. In the past, putting off particularly tough tasks was OK for a certain period of time. Now, you’ll be ruining your whole week of work if you do this. You need to analyze exactly how much time you’re wasting on a weekly basis by keeping a track of it. Start by creating a tight schedule for the upcoming week. Then, go back at the end of the week and see how rigidly you kept to it. This should give you a good idea of whether procrastination has become a real issue.

So, let’s say that procrastination has become a big problem. What can you do about it? My first suggestion is that you seek a source of motivation. One of the reasons why procrastination can creep into a business is because things are moving slowly. All that hard work doesn’t seem to be paying off, and you’re not enjoying the success you believe you deserve. As a result, it’s far too easy to find yourself drifting off and not working quite as hard. Surround yourself with motivational quotes and images. Take a leaf out of Josh Tetrick’s book, and “act as if you’re going to die tomorrow”. Look at this page on Forbes for more about his motivations, and visit other websites for more sources of inspiration. You need that motivating factor from time-to-time.

Of course, you need to find ways to turn this habit around, and it isn’t the easiest one to kick. If you’re a serial procrastinator, you’ve got your work cut out for you. There’s a lot more to it than simple motivational techniques, although they can certainly be useful. We’ve already talked about the importance of monitoring your procrastination habit, but you need to go one step further than that. Now, it’s important to start training your brain to get out of the habit. Eliminate the distractions around you. If you’re constantly browsing Facebook, download a software package that will stop you from accessing it. Get into the habit of maintaining your focus, and do what it takes to stay on that path.

If you need even more motivation to stay away from procrastination, there are additional things you can do. Firstly, you can make a promise to reward yourself if you can finish your day’s work by a certain deadline. Alternatives include setting mini-goals throughout the day and sticking to-do lists on your monitor. It all helps to get you into the right mindset.

Hopefully, by ditching procrastination, you’ll notice a huge difference! Good luck.