Procrastination: The Enemy Within

So you want to do something that will benefit you and your family. You wanted to buy a house, a car, invest on a new gadget, or just generate income without hassle. You already have plans in your mind. You even wrote it down to give you a reminder. You have even set your specific goals…

The question now is: did you do anything for these things to come true?

If you didn’t, and if you haven’t made any move at this point, then, I’ll say this right now: sorry, you lost to an unseen enemy known as…

PROCRASTINATION.

WHY?

A lot of people struggling to get things done end up procrastinating, and it contributes a lot of factors. Let’s all admit: most of us hate to admit that they’re getting lazy over something they, themselves, have planned for a long time, and when they realized what went wrong, they will end up cramming until it’s too late. So why procrastination wins in the end?

• DISTRACTIONS

Beeping cellphones. Social media on your desktop tabs screen. Beds and couches. Pets. There are a lot of things around us that will keep us from our focus and from doing our job in time. Especially if you’re working at home, most of these are available around our own bedroom and living room. Whenever you are working on a certain project or job, once you touch your phone or open that social media tab on your screen, it will now drain even ten seconds of our focus at work, until we realized that we’re already holding our phones to browse or socialize and totally forgetting that we have a job to finish.

• SCATTERED THOUGHTS

We have have a lot of things swimming in our minds, and we wanted each of them to happen right away, if not at the same time. We’ve been thinking too much on what to do that we end up losing motivation to do even just one of those things, and then we end up doing nothing at all.

• AFRAID OF TAKING RISKS

We’re somehow happy with what we’re doing, even if it is already a boring routine, as long as we play safe, until we end up achieving nothing. This is one of the reasons most of us face, especially if you’re just about to look for a job and most job postings require you to have a year of experience on a certain field or so. Not all jobs are looking for fresh graduates, and not all job seekers are jack-of-all trades.

• LACK OF MOTIVATION

Why are we working in the first place? Surely, our main goal is to have income. But once we have income, we wanted to increase it, right? Once we have that mindset, we will end up in a never-ending rat race. We’ll lose our main why like our family. Although we want to earn for our family, money comes and goes, but your family will remain there at all cost.

FIGHT IT OFF

We wanted to end the cycle of just going to the office, work, go home and sleep just to earn money. We have a lot of things that we want to do, even in the middle of pandemic, without sacrificing our health and safety. So I thought of listing up things that we can do to end procrastination. Disclaimer, though: I’m just about to try these things my myself as well, so I thought listing them down will make me get up and do it no matter how hard it is and how long it will take for it to be done.

1. Create A Schedule – Try to allot a day or time to do one job at a time, unless you are motivated enough to do two in a day or more, as long as you have them scheduled. Even set an alarm to remind you to do your next task if you’re the type who wanted to get things done before the end of the day. For example, you have two tasks that you will need to complete within a week, so try to give them one to two hours for each, depending on how important that task is.
2. Weight What Is Important – Check which task is more gruesome and which task you would think you will be able to finish in minutes. I suggest to prioritize easy task first because complicated tasks can drain up your time. The easier the task is, the quicker you will finish it, so you will still have more time to do more difficult tasks later on. If you happen to still have extra time, you can stretch it for your complicated tasks.
3. Include Breaks In Your Schedule – Of course we all wanted to take a few breaks if our work begins to drain our braincells and strength. You can adjust it from fifteen minutes or an hour, even longer, depending on your need. This is quite a double-edged sword, though, so if you will be planning to take a break, set up a reminder to yourself to go back to work. This will help you feel refreshed and fully charged once you get back to your tasks.
4. Start Small – If you’re a student or currently looking for a job, start fighting off procrastination by applying the above tips in your everyday life, like when and what time you’ll have to study for a subject that you’re having a test with, weight down which subject you thought that needs more attention, even doing household chores. Once you have a job, you will definitely bring that habit in sorting out what is more prioritized and what is easier for you.
5. Write A Journal – Some of you will ask, why do I have to write a journal? What if I forgot? Guess what: I’m not a fan of journals, myself, because I thought I might forget those things I wrote if I started one, or even forgot to write even for a day. This is just a small step for us to stop procrastination. Write down anything you’ve done — even just a simple washing of the dishes, and write down things that you need to do. You’ll eventually read them again and again to remind you of what you did and what you’ll do in the future.
6. Seek Help — You’re not alone in battling procrastination. You have your family, friends and peers you can turn to if you think you can’t handle them by yourself. You can even reach out to your clients by talking to them on how they can be done. Most especially, the Heaven Hotline is always open 24/7, ask for His guidance on how you can get through your tasks.
7. DISCIPLINE YOURSELF – So I highlighted this last item and typed it in all capital letters because it’s obvious: If you want to do these things listed above to fight off procrastination, the first thing you should fix first is DISCIPLINE. We all need it to keep our focus on anything that we have to do. We need to fight off temptation to slack off even for just a second if we value time that much, and if we are already employed or starting as VAs, we should be aware that slacking off for even a second could cost us time and money. So hopefully, we will have the strong will and determination to escape from rat race.

I’m just about to try some of these tips, myself, so don’t worry, if you’re like me who have been tormented by this unseen enemy for years, we’re just on the same boat, so we can learn and work together. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions regarding this post — or if you just wanna say hi!