Ask yourself why you are procrastinating
Procrastinators are not just poor time-keepers. As Professor Joseph Ferrari, who specializes in the study of chronic procrastination, says: “Telling someone who procrastinates to buy a weekly planner is like telling someone with chronic depression to just cheer up.” Procrastination is psychological.
At its base, procrastination involves lying to yourself about how you work best or the importance of the things on your to-do list. It may be a way of coping with fear of failure or of success. It could indicate that someone finds it difficult to make decisions or avoids the responsibility of making them. It could even mean they have overloaded themselves by saying yes to too many things, and procrastination is their system’s way of shutting down. Or maybe they just subconsciously get a high from the last-minute rush. The first step to overcoming procrastination is to ask yourself why you're doing it.
Make a list
Start with listing everything you have to do, even the small things you’d remember without writing down. Then divide the list into smaller, more manageable lists of five to 10. This helps you to think about your tasks in more concrete terms rather than keeping a cloudy list of to-dos in your head.
But be careful to be realistic about what you can accomplish in a day. Some people who think they are procrastinators simply overestimate what they can get done. It’s not that they aren’t working effectively, they just cannot finish their lists.
It is better to finish five tasks today and another five tomorrow than to load a list of ten today and barely crack your way through two. Unrealistic lists can overwhelm you into procrastination. This also means throwing out tasks that you will never actually get around to doing.
Work to deadlines
Set yourself mini-deadlines throughout the day so that when the actual deadline approaches, you haven't left tasks to the last minute. It can be difficult to stick to deadline you have set yourself so try the Pomodoro technique. Choose a task and set a 25-minute timer (www.focusboosterapp.com has a free application set to count your sessions and itunes has an Pomodoro timer for your iPhone).
