“Everything in human character goes to wreck, under the reign of procrastination, while prompt action gives to all things a corresponding and proportional life and energy.”_William Alcott
As red blooded Homo sapiens, procrastination is a natural malady that every one of us must conquer to reach our highest potential.
From a very young age, we tend to struggle between doing and delaying what needs to be done. But now at this stage, we must understand that success will only go to those who have learnt to do now what others will rather do later.
Furthermore, the real danger of procrastination is that, the simplest tasks can become really hard when they are allowed to accumulate into a big heap. As the American aphorist and professor emeritus of French, Mason Cooley said, “Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder.”
Observably, those who delayed yesterday are likely to repeat the same thing tomorrow. This is certainly a habit we don’t want to build. Unfortunately, some people do just that, and they may remain hooked on sloth, till the end of their lives.
In order for us to be free of such a disaster, I am sharing today one simple idea that we can use to overcome procrastination for good. And it is, to go small—or even very small— on the task at hand, no matter how hard or how big it actually is.
Sometimes, it's easy to feel somewhat besieged by the utter volume of work on our desks. As a result, we find it even easier to put off the whole tasks for a while, until a while becomes dangerously longer than we can afford.
To counteract such ruinous temptation in the midst of massive tasks that are starring at us in the face, I suggest we ask this focusing question, “What is important now?”
At any moment of confusion on what to do, when you have too many things to do, pause for a while and ask yourself the question, “What is important now?” And for that moment, forget everything else. Choose to think only of that important, one task.
Then again, if that one task is really huge, don’t dodge it because there is no better use of your time at the moment, than doing just that one thing. Instead, break it down into smaller parts that are easily doable by numbering the broken pieces from, say one to six. And, don’t mind whether the mini objective has an immediate effect on the task as a whole. Just make sure it is definite, meaningful and bite-sized.
By breaking this huge task into manageable pieces, it becomes far easier to beat procrastination and spring into action. More so, crossing off smaller parts of the giant task brings a wonderful sense of accomplishment to you as you proceed on the job. And the speed with which you will complete the task may surprise you.
This simple strategy—used on the basis of time—was responsible for the prolific output of the famous English Novelist of the Victorian era, Anthony Trollope who published more than forty novels on topical matters.
His smart methodology was to write 250 words every 15 minutes. And he would maintain this pattern for three hours each day. That is about twelve 15-minute blocks in a three-hour session. Quite simple but very powerful!
This approach engendered gradual progress which in turn created momentum that made it almost impossible for him to think about procrastinating. And with the corresponding feelings of effectiveness and motivation; he was able to achieve the mammoth feat of writing many successful books.
Back to you my enthusiastic reader; use this strategy to seize your own day, every day. Never let your irreplaceable asset slip away by always remembering the words of the President of the defunct Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev when he said: “Those who are late will be punished by life itself.”
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