3 Ways To Stay Focused And Stop Procrastinating
A sign of success is the ability to accurately predict the impacts of doing or not doing something while preserving the ability to remain focused in the long run.
The potential impact of any task is the key factor in how significant it is to you.
This method of assessing the importance of a task is how you define what your next priority really is.
How to Stop Procrastinating and Stay Focused?
1. Work early in the morning.
You always seem to find the time to get your tasks done, often at the last minute, especially when you don’t have time and the impact of non-completion of those tasks can be really severe.
So, the best way to complete the job, and avoid the unpleasantness that would follow from the non-completion of the task, is to start doing it early in the morning.
I know it can be frustrating for some people, but the productivity that you’ll get from doing the job early will massively increase your ability to accomplish your tasks.
Further Reading: How To Motivate Yourself Everyday When You Wake Up
2. Quit setting deadlines.
Setting deadlines for our goals comes with a lot of pressure on our shoulders, which is quite devastating to reach our aims.
Oftentimes, deadlines can be really good to push ourselves to do the job, and more importantly to stay focused.
But, when for example you want to develop a skill, it’s very hard to predicate the required time to master it, and in this case, setting a deadline can be very overwhelming.
The better approach to free yourself from this pressure is to stop chasing the end result and chase the progress instead.
When you gain some momentum and build the necessary habits, then you can scale things up by setting goals with deadlines.
3. Increase Your Planning Skills
Planning is the most important skill that you need to cultivate to stay focused and organized.
To help you stay on track and get your most important tasks completed, ask yourself these three questions:
Question 1: “What are my highest value activities?”
This is one of the most important questions you can ask and answer. What are your highest value activities? First, think this through for yourself. Then ask your friends and family.
Before you start working, you must be crystal clear about your highest value activities, otherwise, it is going to be challenging to focus.
Question 2: “What can I and only I do, that if done well, will make a real difference?”
Every hour of every day, you can ask yourself this question and there will be a specific answer.
Question 3: “What is the most valuable use of my time, right now?”
This question is the primary question of time management. Answering this question properly is the key to evolving your planning skills.
Every hour of every day, there is some task that is the most valuable use of your time. Answering this question, over and over again, will help you to determine the tasks that are relevant to your mission and the ones that waste your time.
Do first things first and second things, then third. Not all at once.
The more precise your answers are, the easier it will be for you to set clear priorities, stop procrastinating, and get started on the tasks that represent the most valuable use of your time.
Once you detected your most important tasks, write them down, and put them on the wall or somewhere where you can see them every day.
Those are my 3 simple ways to stay focused and stop procrastinating. Thank you for reading this article, and I hope it helped you to make things into perspective and start taking action!
Further Reading: Top 6 Tips for Effective Planning
More Tips to beat procrastination and laziness? Check out the list below:
