Procrastination to productivity

pro-cras-ti-na-tion

1. The action of delaying or postponing something.

oh-ver-hwelm, –welm

Verb

1. To load, heap, treat, or address with an overpowering or excessive amount of anything

In the upcoming days I’m going to talk about procrastination and overwhelm. These are very common things that most people deal with.  My goal is to help you, by giving  you some ideas to help you move past these feelings and move into a state of productivity.

Let’s start with procrastination.  Do you consider yourself someone who procrastinates?   Do you do it a little or a lot?  Maybe you only procrastinate certain jobs like…. cleaning the bathroom.

Don’t worry you are not alone!

So many of us procrastinate from time to time.  Sometimes putting things off isn’t really a big deal but sometimes it can have pretty serious consequences and can greatly impact your day to day life.  The thing about procrastination is that it never really feels good.  It usually causes some form of anxiety and can even make you feel lazy and like you just can’t get anything done.  (even if you want to)  I find that procrastination is a cycle.  You put one thing off and feel kinda crappy about it which doesn’t put you in a great mood to get anything else done.  So you continue to procrastinate until you are so deep in a hole that it’s very hard to get out.  Your tasks have piled up around you to the point that you don’t even know where to begin.

Sometimes it isn’t even that you are really procrastinating.  Sometimes no matter how much you do in a day it can feel like you actually haven’t accomplished anything!! I feel like this A LOT.  Often you just want to give up because it feels like no matter how hard you work you just can’t get ahead, so why bother.  This is another cycle that can lead to low productivity.

Here are some of my strategies and coping mechanisms for dealing with procrastination and overwhelm.  I will be diving deeper into these strategies in upcoming posts, but for now here are the basics.

1. I force myself to do one thing.  Something small that takes less than 10 min

2. I only focus on one task at a time

3. I focus on all of the things I have done instead of all of the things I haven’t

4. I cut myself some slack, and plan some “me” time where I actively don’t do anything I don’t want to

5. I ask for help. It is such a simple concept but sometimes so hard to do

I hope this helps and I look forward to sharing more with you very soon!!