Procrastination Got the Best of Me: Here’s What I am Doing About it

If you have been an avid follower of my blog since its inception, you will notice that I did not publish a post last week. After weeks of poor (or no) planning, procrastination finally got the best of me. I found myself swamped with a million things to do and naturally, something’s got to give. And my Sunday post did give.

The resulting embarrassment challenged me to improve on my planning habits. Here are the methods I have applied to become a better planner and achieve higher levels of productivity this week.

Delegation

If you are a small business owner looking to scale up, you will have to deal with the insecurities of delegating vital duties to other people. Perhaps you are used to interacting with your customers one-on-one but now have to delegate customer service and support. You may fear that your customers will disappear when they feel like they are dealing with a faceless corporation.

You may also worry that you will not get the same quality of results when you delegate certain duties that you are highly skilled at. However, keep in mind that handling many vital tasks on your own equally reduces your productivity. After all, a jack of all trades is often master of none. And anyway, those people you delegate duties to will eventually learn, just like you. The good thing is, you will be there to teach them how you do things in order to achieve the same great results.

Use Planning Tools

No matter how complex your daily routines are, a to-do list will often do away with most of your planning hassles. Yes, nobody takes them seriously, I know. But combined with other planning tools, a to-do list remains to be the mother of all planners.

To come up with effective to-do lists:

• Begin by listing all things you need to do over a given period of time.

• Group them based on their relationships. Put related tasks in one group.

• Assign a rating to each group in its order of importance or urgency.

• Evaluate the complexity of each task and assign a rating. This will help you determine how much time is sufficient for each task.

• Allocate time for each task, including reasonable time for breaks.

PRO TIP: There are tens of planning apps on your smartphone’s app store. Experiment with two or three and you will find one that helps you organize your work better. At the very least, use the calendar app on your phone to do more than check the date today. 😉

Lifestyle Adjustments

No matter how much work you delegate or how well-thought your to-do list is, you will not achieve better productivity if your lifestyle is not aligned with your goals. For instance, if your concentration span reduces as the day progresses, you might want to start your days earlier than usual in order to get the important things done when you are most focussed. Dealing with stressors as soon as they appear also goes a long way.

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.

Jim Rohn

For the most part, your discipline rules over all else. It has a bearing on your time management, the key to proper planning and high productivity.

So, what strategies are you currently employing to achieve higher levels of productivity? Let me know in the comments section below.