Everyone procrastinates. Even I procrastinated writing this article - it was supposed to be publishe

Everyone procrastinates. Even I procrastinated writing this article - it was supposed to be published two days ago!

No point in beating yourself up for procrastinating, but it’s important to be wary of it and not let it get too deep. Here are a few tips on how to avoid procrastination and become peak-productive.

There’s an energy spending for each decision we make during the day. Asking yourself “What do I need to do to today?” when you wake up is a welcome card to procrastination, believe it or not.

Asking yourself about what you need to achieve on a given day compels you to give yourself answers, which compels you to make decisions. This halts your self-control and makes you tired, leading to procrastinating on whatever it was that you had to do.

Tip.Plan your day ahead of time instead of at the last minute, or create habits around certain areas of your life. Once habits set in, you won’t even have to think about it anymore - it will be automatic, thus relieving you from making certain decisions.

For example, instead of deciding if you’re going to exercise today or not, decide in advance exactly which days of the week will be dedicated to exercising. Another example is to pick your clothes the night before rather than the morning-of. And so forth.

I’ve taken this one very deeply into my own life. Finishing your day before it starts basically means getting rid of tasks so that you can actually procrastinate.

“I get things done ahead of time so that I can be lazy afterwards.” You’ll likely hear me say this often whenever someone asks me why I complete projects one or two months in advance.

Take care of your tasks as soon as possible, not forgetting to make your decisions ahead of time whenever possible (previous tip), and you’ll see your life become a lot less stressed out!

Our mind plays tricky games when it comes to getting things done. It’s easy for you to focus more avidly on everything you have to achieve than on each of those goals individually.

For example, you might have a project you’re working on. This project involves researching, assessing information, drafting, double-checking, structuring information, maybe designing a presentation, etc.

Sounds like a lot, right? Dreadful. Well, it’s normal to focus on the bunch instead of the bits, but do practice that exercise.

Whenever something involves more than one or two steps to accomplish, focus on each step instead. The previous example could be broken down as: research and assess information for 1 hour, draft for 30 minutes, double-check for 30 minutes, structure information for 30 minutes, design for 1 hour, etc.

When you break tasks down and focus on the steps they involve, you realise that it’s not that much and it automatically becomes more doable than before.

It’s not easy to fight the tendency of thinking about everything you have to get done but you’ll get there with time.

Let’s put this simple. If you’re an alcoholic, you’re not going to keep booze in the house, right? The same applies to procrastinating.

Remove any cues that might trigger your procrastination habits. This might involve working away from where your TV is, installing specific add-ons to your browser that prevent you from checking websites that aren’t related to work (e.g. social media, YouTube, etc), activating your phone’s DND feature so you can focus properly, and more.

It might sound silly but the mere presence of stuff that you use to distract yourself will impact your productivity and you won’t be able to focus as effectively as you should.

Have you got any tips yourself? Keep up with my Blooming Through Life article series for more content like this, and feel free to suggest your own article.