7 Simple Strategies To Overcome Procrastination

Are you a procrastinator? Do you always put off tasks? Do you struggle with reaching goals? Here are seven simple strategies to overcome procrastination!

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Jan 16, 2024

Compounding is critical in both personal finance and self-development. Compound interest can either work for you with a savings account or against you with debt. The same is true with time. Time can be used to help or against you. Procrastination makes time work against you. Here are seven strategies to overcome procrastination.

“You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”
– Zig Ziglar

Two-Minute Rule

The two-minute rule states to do something in two minutes or less. Do it. Stop allowing mundane tasks that only take a couple of minutes to complete to prevent you from moving on to the next step.

Mundane and small tasks can remain at the back of your mind for days on end if they are never done. Get rid of that bad feeling. Stop delaying a task that could be finished in two minutes. Stop putting it off.

Five Minute Rule

This strategy is simple. Use a timer. Set the clock for five minutes. Focus on the task that you have continued to put off. You can stop or continue after the time goes off for five minutes.

Most of the time, the momentum created by starting the task was all needed. You can then go ahead and continue to work on finishing that task.

Snowball Effect

The two and five-minute rules lead to the snowball effect. A snowball effect begins. It starts small. One task. Two tasks. Three tasks. Before you know it, multiple tasks have been finished.

Task You Have Been Putting Off

Start to work on that task you have continued to put off. Move it to the top rather than consistently placing it at the bottom of your to-do list. This way, it gets done.

One of my least favorite tasks is checking my email and responding to texts and phone calls. They are just busy tasks. They often do not help to move me forward to reaching a goal. Most of my emails and phone calls are spam. Finding the handful of critical emails in my inbox can take lots of time.

Action First Mindset

It is widely believed that motivation leads to action, which leads to more action. In reality, small actions are what lead to results. This is where the action-first mindset comes in.

There are three critical aspects to an action-first mindset:

Take a small action
Action generates motivation
Motivation leads to more actions

3 fundamental principles of the action first mindset

The more small actions that are done each day create motivation. You will start to see small results over time. As those tiny results come in, it leads to more action. It can also help to develop self-confidence because you are seeing the results from the fruits of your labor.

Action precedes motivation. It does not work the other way around.

Set Limits On Your Learning Time

Set a limit on the time each day spent learning a new topic. It could be done by going through an online course. It may be by reading books. Choose an amount of time that you can allocate to learning each day. It could be as small as five minutes a day or as much as an hour. It depends on your schedule.

Self-learning is the best type of education. You can tailor a curriculum to develop new skills you want to learn. It is often less expensive than going to college. The people you learn from will usually have experience in what they are talking about. They had to put in real-world work to accomplish and reach their goals. That has been my experience taking digital courses on various topics compared to when I attended college courses. Today, I would always purchase a digital course on a topic over attending a course through a college or an educational institution.

You will know that you are growing when you are learning when you:

Learn
Apply the knowledge
Learn
Apply what you learned

In contrast, procrastination works like this:

Learn
Learn
Learn
Learn

Information without application is just procrastination. Learning with application leads to growth.

Break Down Goals Into Actionable Chunks

Simplify an objective by breaking it down into actionable chunks. Make a large project down into bite-size pieces. The tinier and more defined your goal is, the simpler it is to take action to complete it. Some examples are:

I want to write 500 words a day for my first book.
I want to lose ten pounds over six months.
I want to walk ten thousand steps every day.

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Summary

There are many ways to better oneself. Applying time management strategies to overcome procrastination is essential to reaching goals. Stop putting off those small tasks. They compound over time. Take action today to complete one small task, then work to reach a goal.

What is a task that you have been putting off? What time management strategies help you? How can you stop procrastinating? Let us know in the comments below!