Overcoming Procrastination

One of the biggest challenges to being self-employed and owning your own business is getting over time management procrastination. It’s just so easy when you’re the boss to let things slide until it’s an emergency and you must absolutely get the task done. Here are a few tips to get out of this habit and start being productive today, not tomorrow.

Challenge yourself to something achievable but challenging. Sometimes we procrastinate because the task seems too large to manage. For example, you have an information product to create and just don’t know where to start. Rather than putting “create information product” on your task list, break the project up into several smaller steps. The first one could be, “Outline information product” or “Choose title for information product.”  These smaller, more attainable goals are easier to accomplish and don’t feel as if they’re looming over your head.

Reward yourself (with a day off). Work hard, play hard is the cliché, right? Well take advantage of it. Make a to-do list at the beginning of the week and promise yourself a day off, where you do something fun, when the list is complete.

It’s easier to commit to this reward if you involve other people. For example, if you make an appointment for a massage on Friday, well you had better have your task list done by Thursday night or you’re going to have to cancel on your masseuse and she’ll never book you an appointment again for cancelling at the last minute. You’re making yourself accountable.

Identify distractions. Find out what you procrastinate with. Do you watch television? Run errands? Surf the net? Determine what distracts you. Spend a day or two working, or procrastinating, like you usually do and simply take note of what you do other than work.

Eliminate distractions. Once you know what you’re using to procrastinate then it’s time to get tough. Eliminate the distractions. For example, if you find that you often let household chores deter you from being productive, schedule a time for household chores. Give yourself thirty minutes at lunchtime to get a chore list completed and then go back to work.

Use tools to help you. Time-tracking tools, both online and off, are great for helping you stay on task. You can for example use something as simple as an egg timer. Set it for thirty-five minutes. Work for thirty-five minutes and when the timer dings, give yourself ten minutes or so to stretch, walk around the block, put away the clean dishes or something other than work and then go back and set the timer again.

Get creative with these tools and ideas and use them to help you stay on task and stop procrastinating.

Time Management

Time management can be the single biggest challenge to working from home and being a successful entrepreneur. Learning to overcome these obstacles can be the key to managing and leading a successful business.

What are time management obstacles and what causes them? Many things cause time management obstacles including:

1. Perfectionism – Many people use perfectionism as a crutch; a way to stay busy doing what they know how to do and to let the rest slide. For example, you’re a skilled writer but detest accounting, which means you spend days on a sales letter and your books are so messed up you don’t know who owes you what or how much money you’re making or losing.

2. Procrastination – This happens for a number of reasons. If you’re facing burnout, then you’ll likely feel like avoiding anything related to your business. However, if you’re facing a task you don’t want to do it’s much easier to procrastinate.

3. An inability to say no – Guess what; not only should you not be doing everything – you can’t! And if you try to, something’s going to give. You’re not going to be able to devote your full attention to your business-related tasks, they’ll suffer and your bottom line will suffer.

4. Lack of planning – It’s easy to become caught up in tasks like

* Social networking
* Email
* Phone calls
* Checking stats and website analytics (This is important but you don’t need to obsessively watch the numbers)
* Surfing the net, reading blogs and industry information

One quick email check can turn into a full hour of back and forth email correspondence and before you know it, your entire schedule is off for the day. Planning, and sticking to your plan, helps you stay on track.

To overcome time management obstacles, consider these four steps:

#1 – What’s stopping you?

Look at what’s holding you up. Is it procrastination? Perfection? A lack of planning? What’s getting in your way?

#2 – Prioritize and set goals

Prioritizing and goal setting are two very important components of time management. Goal setting is easiest to accomplish when you set a goal that is attainable and measurable and when you break it down into smaller manageable goals.

Creating a task list is another item that, as strange as it may sound, needs to become a scheduled part of your day and your week. You’ll want to spend a bit of time prior to Monday morning creating a list of tasks and goals for the upcoming week. Keep in mind that some days may be set aside as planning days, days off or meeting days.

#3 – Schedule your day, week and month

Make sure you have time to accomplish the goals, tasks and priorities you’ve established. Set aside the time you need by planning your days, weeks, and even your month out.

To make this process easier, and to lighten your load, there are time management tools like a PDA, desktop scheduling software and the good old fashioned paper calendar, which can help you establish and maintain time management success.

#4 – Get help

Finally, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, it may be time to seek outside help. Consider hiring someone to manage the tasks that seem to get in the way. Often these are the administrative tasks. You can outsource them to a virtual assistant to lighten the load. You can also hire a housekeeper if daily chores are a distraction from your business. And don’t forget about technology. Many tasks can be automated.

Overcoming your time management obstacles is easy when you are able to acknowledge what they are and why they exist. From there it’s merely a process of planning how to overcome them and using the right tools to get the job done.