Why “Doing It Now” is a good thing.

Why do people procrastinate? Typically there are two main causes that result in procrastination; either the task at hand is OVERWHELMING or the task at hand is UNPLEASANT. Procrastination sucks the energy out of you and causes unnecessary stress. When a person procrastinates they are overloading their mind with too many tasks to manage causing anxiety and nervous tension, all which is avoidable. People spend too much time following up on their follow up instead of using a “Do It Now” frame of mind.

It is much easier to complete the follow up now, instead of putting it off. Try doing this with the things that make sense to do it with. As an example, if you tell someone you’ll call them back in two days; call them back in two days. Really, could you have dealt with the issue present day rather than calling them back in two days? By telling yourself you are going to do less procrastinating and less follow up, you will complete more tasks NOW!

Procrastination can lead to undesirable results. For instance, if you’re not in the habit of making regular backups of your computer files, the first time your hard drive crashes you’ll discover how detrimental procrastination can be. So how can you tell if you are a procrastinator? There are a number of ways, but here are some just a few tell tale signs:

• You allow piles of paper to grow in your home or office
• More often than not you don’t respond to e-mails and letters in a reasonable amount of time
• You have a tendency to delay important projects for more easily accomplished tasks.

Have you identified yourself in this list? No problem, there is still hope for you! To beat procrastinating you must change your mind set and deal with the task immediately, meeting it head on. If the task is quite large, break the task up into various stages, setting goals, and rewarding you for completing the tasks on time. Most importantly ask yourself, “What will be the price of procrastinating and am I willing to pay it?” Eventually you will have to do the task anyways, so you might as well get it over and done with.

By using a “Doing it NOW” frame of mind, you will create more time for yourself and add a new level of efficiency to everything you do.

© 2009 eMarketing 4 Business LLC