Procrastinations Best Friend: Stress
“I am too stressed”……“I am too busy”……..“There are too many things to do”
These are phrases that pop up way too many times in a common everyday conversation. To a certain extent, it is okay to be stressed. Healthy stress is what drives people to improve.
But, for many of us; at the end of a busy and hectic day, nothing seems to be done! And the worst thing is the unhealthy stress accumulates in our mind until it hits “burnout mode” and leads on to “breakdown mode”. Either that or we just give up and decide to do less. And hence procrastination grows stronger and stronger.
Procrastination Buster: An Effective To-Do-List
I agree that we live busy and complex lives but that does not mean that we have to be forced into a corner and bashed with an overflowing inboxes. One of the most direct way to eliminate this stress and procrastination is tame a busy life. You might just find that this post will maximize your efficiency and instantly drain away those anxious thoughts.
The rest of the post will try and help create an effective to-do-list. To be frank, it is not that different from the conventional organizers and is quite easy. But the littlle details makes a world of difference for task management.
Path to a Procrastination Free World: Planning a To-Do-List that Works
The pitfall to a normal to-do list is: it gets filled up really quickly. And when we look at an astronomical to-do list, we freak out and often choose to ignore it. I am sure anyone can come up with unlimited ways to overcome this. The key is to think ahead when planning a to-do-list and find one that you know will work for you.
The one way that works for me is to “flush” the to-do list into my Calender (read How to Overcome Procrastination Part 3). By flushing and scheduling it into a time on our Calender, we know that these things will be done. This will also instantly let us to know what we need to do on a day by day basis. And now instead of wasting 60% of your brain cells worrying about stuff you can’t do, you can put all your effort and “heart” into the next thing on today’s scheduled Calender.
Key to Winning this War: A Weapon with Quality
Now there are a few small rules I give myself and might help you when using a to-do-list:
All tasks and projects: big, small, important, unimportant, professional or personal will go into this list. Don’t worry about prioritizing just yet. It will sort itself out later (to be explained in How to Overcome Procrastination Part 3).
Sometimes we procrastinate because we see these projects as something really complex and just becomes too much of a hassle to do. But if we break it down into small actions, it will be easier for us to start moving. Thus, have an actual practical task written next to the project. For example if you were going to do some housekeeping for the backyard:
Don’t write “Backyard”. It sounds too far fetched and difficult to even start.
Write something like: “ Backyard–Mow the Lawn” or “Backyard–Buy a lawn mower”.
The to-do-list must be cleared at least once a day. When you get a hang of it, all tasks are to be cleared into the schedule immediately if possible; which means the best case scenario is having a full productive calender but a to-do-list that is empty most of the time.
Conclusion
Now, lets see what is next on my calender…….
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Yasuo Long believes that all employees should have the right to design their lifestyle according to their needs in order to maintain their health, their relationships and their happiness. In pursuit of this, he quit the 9-to-5 and became a telecommuter to give himself the time and mental freedom to discover what it really means to live with direction and purpose.
