5 Ways to Eliminate Procrastination

This is a guest post from Brennan Smith – he’s going to share with you his 5 different tips to eliminate procrastination, boost your productivity and pursue success in your daily life, one task at a time!

Make Bite Sized Chunks

The biggest trigger of procrastination is if the task is too large, or new to us and overwhelming. One big task seems a mammoth to tackle, so a simple solution to make it easier on the mind is to break it down into bite sized chunks.

With one big tasks which will take 3 hours it seems such a chore to start, but break that project up into 9 20 minute bite sized chunks and before you know it you can do two of the 9 chunks and you are on a roll. Once you get started and make some progress then it has a feel good factor and a psychological effect of making you want to do more.

Suddenly this big mammoth task seems much more reasonable and very manageable. The trick is to simply concentrate on one chunk at a time, get it done and then move on to the next.

Plan It Out

Planning is one of the real, genuine keys to success. Just like the mammoth task is hard to start, a task without a plan can seem epic too.

However, if you first look at the breakdown and set a detailed timeline with quite specific deadlines then it will map out exactly what needs to be done and when in order to complete the task. Again, it becomes more manageable and you know exactly what to do and when.

Creating a plan and a timeline creates the urgency to act – when you know you have to do a task before this afternoon it puts pressure on you to act. Planning eliminates procrastination by stimulating action.

Make Yourself Accountable

Tell other people about your goals and your plans. This makes you more accountable outside of your own desires. It puts a healthy dose of fear of failure into you to inspire you to work, and makes you want to live up to other people’s expectations.

You know that other people know about your plans and you don’t want to let them down or be seen to give up in their eyes. It is easy to procrastinate or ignore a task when you only have yourself to report to, but when other people are involved it adds extra pressure, a different element and motivator to the task and it motivates you to take action.

You can also possibly add extra power here by starting a competition with your friend or accountability partner. Challenge them to pursue a goal too, and race either other to completion, or simply hold each other accountable. This changes the task too – it’s not just a boring task you have to complete, it is more fun, a shared experiment and some friendly healthy competition to spur you on.

Change your Environment

Just a simple change of scenery can help you to increase your productivity. When you work from the same place over and over this is when bad habits can creep up on you, laziness and procrastination. If you just mix it up a little bit it can really stimulate your mind and help you to just do what you are meant to be doing without procrastinating.

Try working from a cafe if you never have before. Just go there with the mindset that for just one hour you are going to keep your head down and work on your tasks. A new setting like this really can do wonders to blow away the cobwebs of procrastination.

Start Well

Something really simple you can do to make sure you make progress and continue on is to simply start well. Sit down at your desk and write something straight away. If it is a report you need to do then just write the opening paragraph. If it is the ironing you have to do then just setup the ironing board and iron 1 shirt.

Simply getting started clears your mindset, it stops you from thinking negatively and just gets you into a productive state of mind before you have chance to hesitate.

This is a Guest Post from Brennan Smith

Brennan Smith is an internationally renowned hypnotist and his specialist area is helping people to overcome procrastination (check out his stop procrastination hypnosis mp3s) and set their minds right for success. His website, Natural Hypnosis is one of the largest and most respected hypnosis audio websites in the world, from which he offers over 100 different specific sessions for all areas of self improvement.

He also offers 3 free hypnosis mp3s which are full sessions you can download to give hypnosis a try for yourself.