1. Wake up early
All procrastination ends with you thinking there is no time left to do what you really needed to do. By waking up early, you are giving yourself more time to do things, reducing the effects of procrastination. Remember to get at least 7 hours of sleep though; otherwise your health will suffer.
2. Make a schedule
Some people can use a schedule to do all their work. But a lot of us cannot do this effectively. Just having a schedule does not automatically mean you will be procrastinating less. It does however help you remind yourself from time to time all the things you need to do. I suppose this is not a step that will stop procrastination directly, but comes before it. Schedules just make sure you are on track with everything you need to do.
3. Follow the schedule
This is a separate step from making a schedule again because just making a schedule does not automatically make you do them. You may start with the easier or the harder tasks, whichever you prefer, as long as you are doing something from it. Note here that you should obviously only put things in your schedule that actually need to be done. Do something, anything, and don’t worry about time unless you have to. Just keep working, getting rid of one task at a time.
4. Set a time limit
Once you manage to do the things from your schedule on a daily basis, then start setting time limits. This is important because if you restrain yourself in a certain time frame you want to do it less as time passes by. Only when you are able to do tasks from the schedule with your own will should you be thinking about doing it by a certain time. Of course the benefit of this is that now you can finish everything on time.
5. Review your schedule
Look over your schedule at the end of the day, and the end of the week to make see how you are doing. This step, while important, should not be time consuming. Don’t keep looking at the schedule for hours on end remembering everything that happened that day. Just look at everything you were supposed to do, cross off the ones you have done fully, highlight the ones that haven’t managed to do on time yet, and look over the next day’s tasks. It’s really easy; the whole process should take you only 3 to 5 minutes.
As I said at the beginning, procrastination makes you not want to do the things you must do. So to counter it, just do it! The more you think about a task, the more you will procrastinate. Don’t use a full hour just making a schedule or to set the time limits. Use the bulk of your focus to finish your work. The point of the five steps above is to keep that ‘bulk of focus’ untouched. Hope it works :)
