
How to overcome procrastination affecting your career?
Procrastination affecting your career will cause a severe effect on the long term in the workplace.
Is procrastination holding you from achieving the goals you want or need to accomplish?
Many people have a very long to-do list. Some tasks or projects, even quite important ones, remain unfinished for a long time, and it’s easy to start a guilty or ashamed feeling about what you have not yet completed. The most probable reason for procrastination maybe stems from a perception that their project will be difficult, expensive, or confusing.
What is your reason for procrastination affecting your career? How will you overcome it? This blog can help you identify why you delay and how you can overcome your procrastination habit once and for all.
How then, can we move ahead when stalled on a new project? Here are a few useful tactics that can help you.
How to overcome procrastination affecting your career?
- Know what you should know and what you don’t.
There are a lot of projects where it is essential to understand exactly how something has set up. There are others where you need to know only enough to keep things going. For example, take setting up an email newsletter. If setting up Mail Chimp or Constant Contact is not intuitive for you, and you are wasting hours doing things you don’t love. Let another person do the initial set up. You can still manage it monthly from there, even if you were not the one to build it in the first place.
- Ask the question:
What other information do I need? Sometimes we need to research to get started with a project, and sometimes, we already have all the data. If you need more information, decide what exactly that is and make a solid plan to get it. Once you have everything, look at it all together so you can see the big picture of the project to feel more confident.
- Never go for too many opinions and suggestions.
Sometimes, you may long for the support of friends and family. But, before asking their opinions, ask yourself how much they really know about the decision you are trying to make. For example, when it comes to logo design, I trust my designer, not my friend who’s good with colours (even though she may have a very strong opinion). When it comes to selecting software to run my business, I listen to people who have chosen this option before me. Asking for too many inputs is often just another road towards procrastinating.
- Break your project down into categories.
Something like redesigning your website can make you feel like a huge task. But, if you break it down, you will see more manageable chunks of work. Then, start with the homepage and make a list of what you want to include. You can add things like
- Facebook and LinkedIn social media icons,
- A headshot of yourself,
- Testimonials from your clients,
- A link to your calendar.
The point is, be as precise as you can.
- Don’t keep the details in your head; write them down.
When we don’t have a well-written plan, we will spend hours spinning our wheels trying to remember what we did and what to do next. So, spend the time upfront to write a detailed plan to see the entire project. It will save time and work.
- Leave perfectionism behind.
It’s better to get started and improve your work rather than waiting until you have every detail, just right. You will learn as you go and make it better over time. Businesses evolve all the time. So, develop the improvement muscle, and you will be able to stay current with what your business needs.
Overall, the most difficult part of any new project is getting started. Once you start moving, everything will fall in the right place.
Apply these six simple moves and put procrastination affecting your career away forever!