Procrastination plagues even the most productive people. At first, it sounds like a sweet deal to leave your work behind because you’ve convinced yourself tomorrow will be a new and bright day.
Wake up. You won’t all of the sudden have the motivation tomorrow that you lack today. Motivation comes and goes, but your work doesn’t. No one likes spending their day working when they could be sitting on the couch watching their favorite tv show.
However, working on projects too close to their deadline due to procrastinating may result in poor performance, burnout, fatigue, and unnecessary stress. Depart from procrastination and have more free time by applying the following tips to your work routine.
Say Goodbye To Distractions
First and foremost, access what distracts you. Most are within your control, but there are external and internal factors that may distract you from completing work or other projects.
- Text messages
- Social interactions
- Video games
- Hunger
- Illness
- Emails, both from work and personal
- Background noise
- Fatigue
Avoid as many distractions as possible and be on the lookout for those that trigger your tendency to procrastinate.
Parents don’t have the luxury of ignoring avoiding all distractions. After all, being a parent is a full-time job. So, the best alternative is a daycare, taking turns taking care of children between parents or leaving a trusted family member or friend in charge.
Where & When
Find when you are most productive during the day. It might take a couple of days to figure out your schedule, but once you know if you’re a morning person or night owl, figuring out the rest will be quicker.
Say, for instance, you are a morning person. Then, your day might look a little something like the schedule below, meanwhile, night owls will do the complete opposite.
Morning Person
- Wake up-6 am
- Project #1-6 am-8 am
- Breakfast-8 am
- Project #2-9 am-10 am
- Break 15min
- Project #3-10:15 am-12 pm
- Lunch-12 pm
- Project #4-1 pm-3 pm
- Break 15 min
- Project #5-3:15 pm-5 pm
- Break 15 min
- Project #6-5 pm-7 pm
- Dinner-7 pm
Learning your peak productivity time is crucial, but knowing where you work best is just as important. Amid the pandemic, people have adjusted their workspaces, taken projects home, and experienced the struggles of little to no privacy.
Try out different workspaces. Head to a library or coffee shop if you are a student, build a workspace at home that is not in your room or kitchen if possible.
Why avoid the bedroom and kitchen?
The kitchen is where you eat, where you should sit down, relax, and have a meal.
Set Priorities & Avoid Overwhelming Yourself
What needs to get done by exactly how by exactly when. Don’t start an online program when you already started working towards an eicr certificate. It’s great to set ambitious goals, but not when it starts taking a toll on your personal and social life.
