3 Effective Tips to Avoid Procrastination

Procrastination is one of the most frequent problems that both offline and remote employees experience. No matter how minor or simple the activity may be, we frequently find ourselves in a scenario where delaying it causes it to become more difficult to complete by the deadline. The issue extends beyond the workplace to everyday life as well. In the audio episode on the “HBR IdeaCast” channel on the “Google Podcasts” platform, Alice Boyes, a former clinical psychologist and author discusses the significance of controlling your habits and offers three practical strategies to avoid procrastination.

Procrastination may be done for a variety of reasons, some of which include taking into account the incubation phase, which refers to the time spent trying to discover answers to the challenges that stand in the way of finishing a project. She thinks it is crucial to understand that we frequently plan our days in a way that includes chores that take considerably longer than we anticipate. The situation when the work is not yet started and is continually postponed, however, is the most difficult. The first and most crucial tip to avoid procrastination offered by Alice says that changing your routines is a key component of beating procrastination. She contends that as a behavior begins to become more automated, it inevitably loses some of its self-control. She also argues that after a given amount of practice, if work is completed on a regular basis, it naturally becomes a part of the day and all other distractions are simply ignored. She claims that the most frequent instances of procrastination at work include chores that we do not do every day. She suggests observing the method that is used when you consistently complete chores in order to create a strategy for scheduling activities. She claims that connecting the activity with values that are significant to you will help you do it quickly and avoid procrastination. She advises doing this by associating your work accomplishment with the values or things that are meaningful to you. In this manner, you will make an effort to complete the assignment by the deadline out of a sense of loyalty to the principles. The third and last tip that Alice offers to avoid procrastination is that it is crucial to recognize the kind of situations in which you procrastinate and the extent to which you procrastinate before you start working on preventing it. She recommends that using this will help you spot patterns and then create an organization plan that will work best for you along with the most effective ways to accomplish the task.

Everyone encounters circumstances where they must combat procrastination once in a while. But doing so is undoubtedly a challenging task. However, it is crucial to prevent procrastinating since in the workplace, achieving goals requires the productive participation of every team member. The aforementioned are a few powerful suggestions from Alice Boyes that will undoubtedly aid you to avoid procrastination.