8 Task Management Tips To Stop Procrastinating And Get More Done

Procrastination is a major concern for many people. Tons of time management hacks have been developed over the years by hundreds of people. Here are 8 of my favorite task management tips to help you get things done and stop procrastinating in your work and personal life.

Think about which one of these ideas could be most helpful to you right now, in your current situation.

1) Get Things Done By Thinking On Paper

Prepare thoroughly if you want to get things done. List every step of the job in advance. Break the job down into its constituent parts before you begin. Simply writing out every detail and thoroughly preparing in advance will help you to stop procrastinating.

2) Come Fully Prepared

When you sit down to work or to begin a task, make sure that you have everything on hand so that you won’t have to get up or move until the task is done. Being fully prepared is a powerful motivator for staying with the task until it is finished.

3) Do One Small Thing To Get Started

There is an 80/20 rule that says that the first 20 percent of the task often accounts for 80 percent of the value of that task. This is probably what Confucius meant when he said that, ‘‘A journey of 1,000 leagues begins with a single step.’’ Once you have taken even one small step to start the job, you will often find yourself continuing on with the task to completion.

4) “Salami Slice’’ The Task

Just as you would never try to eat a whole loaf of salami at once, don’t try to take on all of a job from the start. Sometimes the best way to stop procrastinating and complete a major job is to take a small slice and complete just that piece, just as you would take a single slice of salami and eat it.

When you select a small piece of the task and then discipline yourself to do it and get it behind you, it will often give you the momentum you need to counter inertia and stop procrastinating.

5) Practice The “Swiss Cheese” Technique

Just as a block of Swiss cheese is full of holes, you treat your task like a block of cheese and you punch holes in it.

Select a five-minute part of the job and do only that. Don’t worry about the whole job.

For example, if you want to write an article or a book, break the task down into small pieces that take an identifiable amount of time to complete and do just one small piece at a time whenever you get a chance.

Many authors begin by writing one page a day. If you are doing research, you can read one article per sitting. Many people write complete books on airplanes or complete their college degrees with snatches of time between other activities. If you wrote one page a day for a year, you would have a 365-page book by the end of the year.

6) Do The Task That Causes You The Most Fear Or Anxiety

Often, it has to do with overcoming the fear of failure or rejection by someone else.

In sales, it may be associated with prospecting. In management, it may be associated with disciplining or firing an employee. In relationships, this may have to do with confronting an unhappy personal situation.

In every case, you will be more effective if you deal first with whatever is causing you the greatest emotional distress or fear. Often this will break the logjam in your work and free you up mentally and emotionally to get things done.

7) Start Your Day With The Most Unpleasant Task First

Get it over with and behind you. Everything else for the rest of the day will seem easier in comparison.

A recent study compared two groups of people. One group started an exercise program in the morning. The second group started an exercise program in the evenings after work. The researchers found that the morning exercisers were much more likely to still be in the program six months later. Starting the day with exercise was much more likely to lead to the habit of regular exercise than putting it off until the end of the day when it was easier to make excuses and procrastinate.

8) Think About The Negative Consequences If You Don’t Finish

What will happen to you if this job is not done on schedule?

Both fear and desire are great motivators of human behavior. Sometimes you can motivate yourself by the desire for the rewards of task completion. Sometimes you can motivate yourself into action by thinking about the negative consequences and what will happen to you if do not get things done as promised.

What do you think about these time management tips? Have you tried any of them yourself? If you know other effective ways to stop procrastinating please share and comment below!

7 Steps To Developing A New Habit

How long does it take to develop a new habit?

The time period can be any length from a single second to several years. The speed of new habit pattern development is largely determined by the intensity of the emotion that accompanies the decision to begin acting in a particular way.

Many people think, talk about, and resolve to lose weight and become physically fit. This may go on for years. Then one day, the doctor says that, “If you don’t get your weight down and improve your physical condition, you’re in danger of dying at an early age.”

Suddenly, the thought of dying can be so intense or frightening that the individual immediately changes his diet, begins exercising, stops smoking, and becomes a healthy and fit person. Psychologists refer to this as a“significant emotional experience.” Any experience of intense joy or pain, combined with a behavior, can create a habitual behavior pattern that may endure for the rest of a person’s life.

For example, putting your hand on a hot stove or touching a live electrical wire will give you an intense and immediate pain or shock. The experience may only take a split second. But for the rest of your life, you will have developed the habit of not putting your hand on hot stoves, or touching live electrical wires. The habit will have been formed instantly, and endure permanently.

21 Days To Break A Habit Or Make A Habit
According to the experts, it takes about 21 days to break or form a habit pattern of medium complexity.

By this, we mean simple habits such as getting up earlier at a specific hour, exercising each morning before you start out, listening to podcasts in your car, going to bed at a certain hour, being punctual for appointments, planning every day in advance, starting with your most important tasks each day, or completing your tasks before you start something else.

These are habits of medium complexity that can be quite easily developed in 14-21 days through practice and repetition.

How To Develop A Habit

Over the years, a simple, powerful, proven methodology has been determined for new habit development. It is very much like a recipe for preparing a dish in the kitchen. You can use it to develop any habit that you desire. Over time, you will find it easier and easier to develop the habits that you want to incorporate into your personality.

1) Make A Decision
First, make a decision. Decide clearly that you are going to begin acting in a specific way 100% of the time, whenever that behavior is required. For example, if you decide to arise early and exercise each morning, set your clock for a specific time, and when the alarm goes off, immediately get up, put on your exercise clothes and begin your exercise session.

2) Never Allow An Exception To Your New Habit
Second, never allow an exception to your new habit pattern during the formative stages. Don’t make excuses or rationalizations. Don’t let yourself off the hook. If you resolve to get up at 6:00 AM each morning, discipline yourself to get up at 6:00 AM, every single morning until this becomes automatic.

3) Tell Others You Are Practicing A New Behavior
Third, tell others that you are going to begin practicing a particular behavior. It is amazing how much more disciplined and determined you will become when you know that others are watching you to see if you have the willpower to follow through on your resolution.
4) Visualize Your New Habit

Fourth, visualize yourself performing or behaving in a particular way in a particular situation. The more often you visualize and imagine yourself acting as if you already had the new habit, the more rapidly this new behavior will be accepted by your subconscious mind and become automatic.

5) Create An Affirmation
Fifth, create an affirmation that you repeat over and over to yourself. This repetition dramatically increases the speed at which you develop the new habit. For example, you can say something like, “I get up and get going immediately at 6:00 AM each morning!” Repeat these words the last thing before you fall asleep. In most cases, you will automatically wake up minutes before the alarm clock goes off, and soon you will need no alarm clock at all.

6) Resolve To Persist
Sixth, resolve to persist in the new behavior until it is so automatic and easy that you actually feel uncomfortable when you do not do what you have decided to do.

7) Reward Yourself
Seventh, and most important, give yourself a reward of some kind for practicing in the new behavior. Each time you reward yourself, you reaffirm and reinforce the behavior. Soon you begin to associate, at an unconscious level, the pleasure of the reward with the behavior. You set up your own force field of positive consequences that you unconsciously look forward to as the result of engaging in the behavior or habit that you have decided upon.