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5 Simple Ways to Reduce Procrastination and Improve Time Management

Are you guilty of procrastinating? Do you spend more time engaging in morning banter by the water-cooler than you do at your desk? Are you working hard, or are you #hardlyworking!? We’ve all been there!

Getting focused and achieving the things we need to do can be tough. In turn, when we procrastinate, this can stop us from achieving key goals. If procrastinating is so disruptive, why do we do it!?

Many of us blame laziness or lack of care as reasons for procrastination, but often this is far from the case!!

A simple reason as to why we procrastinate, is often because we’re experiencing uncomfortable feelings of stress or anxiety about the task we are avoiding. We could be worried that the task is difficult, or more importantly, we may be worrying about whether there is a chance we could actually fail at the task.

Often when we feel threatened, it feels easier to avoid (by procrastinating!) than to face the difficult task itself. Procrastination may even serve as a form of self-sabotage if it starts to interfere with important life goals. Research shows that self-sabotage is a strategy we use to protect ourselves from the painful feelings of potential failure. It’s easy to blame procrastination or “not having enough time” than it is to admit that we genuinely struggled with a task.

Unfortunately, procrastination or avoidance might help us get a feeling of relief in the short term, because we don’t have to face the dreaded task we’re worried about….but in the longer term, our feelings of stress and anxiety often increase when we procrastinate, and we may even start to experience emotions such as guilt and shame if we haven’t achieved the goal we set about to achieve.

So how can we reduce procrastination? Here are my top five tips to help beat procrastination and get down to business!

Reflect on your triggers for procrastination. Do you have a difficult task such as calling difficult customers, having a tough conversation with a colleague or working on a challenging report that you always try and avoid? Recognising the tasks that cause your anxiety to increase can help you to better manage those tasks. If you know you have a difficult call scheduled, plan to allow yourself time to prepare, and to take a coffee break after to de-stress and relax before your next task.
Get the most difficult task out of the way first. Many of us leave the tasks we are dreading until the end of the day…but often when we know we have something really difficult to work on, our anxiety can increase, and we may find excuses simple not to get to the tough task. Getting a difficult task out of the way quickly will help relieve your anxiety and give you feelings of accomplishment. You’ll feel better for the rest of the day knowing that it’s out of the way.
Try the Pomodoro Technique. This technique involves setting a timer for 25 minutes, and focusing on a single task during this time. Ensure you remain distraction free during this time. After 25 minutes, you can take a 5 minute break to relax. See how many Pomodoro’s you can get done in a day!
Write a list of your three most important tasks to complete for the day: To-do lists can be overwhelming, and often leave us feeling unsure of where to start. At the beginning of the day reflect on three things that are essential to achieve in the day. Focus on those three critical things and create a plan for how to best use your time.
Disconnect to minimise distractions: When attempting to work, we’re often also receiving text messages, emails, Facebook Messages, Whatsapp messages, news blasts, newsletters and all kinds of other alerts. When working on an important task, try closing your email down for an hour, and turn your phone onto flight mood. This will allow you to keep your attention where it most needs to be.

Would you try these tips? What are your most common ways to procrastinate? Water-cooler banter? Coffee and cake breaks? Coming up with pointless busywork to do instead of the actual important work? I’d love to hear about your favourite procrastination methods!!!

Boost your Mental Toughness!!

When you hear the term “Mental Toughness” it’s easy to think of sportspeople, or people putting themselves through extreme feats like climbing Mount Everest!! Mental Toughness seems to be everywhere today, and is frequently referenced in sporting literature…. but do you need to be super sporty, or hike through mud and snow to be mentally tough? Or can mental toughness help anyone achieve their goals? Are there mentally tough musicians, dancers, office workers, accountants etc!?

Anyone, in fact, can be mentally tough….regardless of your interest or lack of interest in sport/ice bucket challenges/Tough Mudder/eating insects etc. *Phew!*

Mentally toughness can be defined as “a collection of values, attitudes, behaviours, emotions, which enable and individual to persevere through any adversity, and to maintain concentration and motivation when things are going well” (Gucciardi & Gordon, 2007). So in a nutshell, it’s about having qualities which can help direct you to persevere towards your goals and to be motivated to keep persevering!!

So what are these wonderful qualities which make up mental toughness? Clough & Strycharczyk (2011) use the 4 “C’s” model of mental toughness, which breaks mental toughness into:

Challenge – this is about embracing change, and seeing challenges as opportunities for growth!
Control – this is about having a “can do” attitude, feelings of accountability and belief you can achieve the outcomes you want, as well as your ability to control your emotions.
Confidence – a belief in your own abilities, as well as confidence in your ability to influence others!
Commitment – an ability to set clear goals, and to persevere towards them!

This all sounds great in theory, but are some people just born more “mentally tough” than others!? Well luckily, mental toughness can be taught, and there are several strategies which have been tried and tested in the field of sports psychology, which are now translating to coaching and management literature.

There is no quick fix to become mentally tough, but through a combination of strategies, you can increase your mental toughness….here are a few of my favourite strategies!!

Goal setting. Whilst this sounds simple, setting clear goals can help to direct your attention to the important tasks you need to focus on, and can enhance your commitment to goals. Just remember to set your goals at a level of difficulty that is at the right level of challenge. You may start which smaller, easier to achieve sub goals, then work towards increasing your sense of challenge buy progressing setting more difficult goals. Think about how you will measure your goals….how will you know when you’ve achieved them? Think about the support or resources you might need to achieve your goals.
Mindfulness. Mindfulness compliments mental toughness in many ways – mindfulness is actually a fantastic tool for helping you to develop attentional control and focus (a key element of the “control” component of mental toughness!). In turn, when you’re better able to focus and remain in control of your emotions, you may just find you experience increased confidence as a result of this!
Imagery. Imagery, or mental rehearsal, is commonly used by athletes who are trying to practice and perfect their technical skills, without engaging in physical practice, and can also help increase your feelings of confidence and control. Whatever you’re working on developing your mental toughness for, you can apply imagery to. Are you giving a performance? A speech? Playing in a tennis match? Whatever the task, close your eyes and imagine performing the task in real time. Imagine yourself in the same setting where you would perform the actual task. Think of the feelings you would typically have at the time of the task, and try and bring those to mind. Practice your task/performance in as much detail as you can, using all your senses (imagining the task, imagining the sensations you would feel, imagining the sounds that you would hear). Imagine yourself performing the task perfectly!
Reflection. Mentally tough people regularly reflect on their successes and setbacks…what worked well and what didn’t. Reflection is a key tool to help you to review your progress, acknowledge your successes and improvements, and to make adjustments to your goals and strategies to achieve them if they’re not working!! You could also reflect on your past successes in similar situations to increase your optimism and confidence even more!!

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Remember, like all changes, building mental toughness takes time and persistence!! Enlisting social support from friends and loved ones can also be a great tactic to help support you in your changes.

Would you try some of these strategies? Would you go on a mental toughness journey to help you to achieve and persevere at your goals?

Change your habits

Change is hard work!! It’s often much easier to maintain the status quo than to challenge ourselves to change habits.

Here are a few of my favourite posts on goal setting to help you get started on the path to achieving your goals!!

How to set (really good) goals!
Self monitor and reflect on your current behaviour before you start your changes
Consider the different pathways to help you to achieve your goals and increase your hope!!

What do you want to achieve? Why does it matter to you? Would you try some of these tips?

A simple strategy to improve your self regulation

I for one, know what it’s like to set goals just to realise I haven’t come close to achieving them!! I’ve set about many resolutions to increase my exercise, save money, improve my diet etc, but haven’t got there…why is this? Did I not clearly define what I wanted to achieve? Was I not motivated to actually achieve the goal? Or could it have been that I hadn’t taken the time to look at what I was currently doing, and reflect on this is relation to what I wanted to achieve.

Self regulation lies at the heart of goal setting. Self regulation is about firstly setting a standard for our desired behaviour, then monitoring our current behaviour….if the fit between our desired goal and our current behaviour is right, then we don’t need to act to change what we’re doing….. but if what we want to achieve does not match up with what were currently doing, this discrepancy (also known as Cognitive Dissonance) then motivates us to act!!

So….when preparing to make a change, firstly, set a clear goal for what you want to achieve (for example, I want to reduce my coffee consumption to one cup per day)…and then spend some time collecting some observations about what you are currently doing (currently drinking four cups!). It’s likely that simply comparing what you’re currently doing, to the goal or standard you wish to achieve, will increase your motivation to act towards change, as you have a clear baseline for what you want to address. Taking the time to really notice what we’re doing, also helps us to notice when we’re doing things on “auto-pilot” and to reflect on possible triggers for our behaviours. Is it that in fact I go for another coffee when I’m in need of a break, or is it to relieve boredom?

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Wanting to change your diet? Start with a 1 week food diary where you write down everything you eat each day. Wanting to save money? Keep a log of every purchase you make (no matter how small) for seven days. At the end of your week reflect on your log/diary in relation to where you want to be. Then have a think about the triggers or antecedents that might have led to the behaviour you’ve logged. This simple self monitoring task is very likely to increase your motivation and help you achieve your goals. Continue your log as you set about achieving your goal, and this will give you objective feedback of your progress!!

It may sound basic, but it works!! Have you tried this strategy when making a change?

References:

Watson, D. (1997). The principles of self-regulation. Self directed behaviour: self modification for personal adjustment. Pacific Grove: California, pp 111 – 136.

Positive Thinking: Can Self Talk and Positive Affirmations Increase your Performance?

Our minds are constantly chattering away with an internal dialogue, or “self talk.” Our self talk can be helpful, and can help to increase our confidence, mood or performance, or at times, self talk can be negative, which can lead to decreased confidence, performance difficulties and low mood.

Do you use positive thinking to help you get through tough situations, like public speaking, performances or even social situations? Does it work for you? Using positive affirmations or “positive self talk” is often praised as a key strategy to increase performance, and even to change our moods…but is self talk actually effective? Could simply replacing a negative thought with a positive one actually change how we feel and help us to perform better?

Some people like to use positive affirmations to increase their confidence (eg, “I’m great at X, I’m amazing!!” etc), but it’s important to use such affirmations with caution. If you don’t actually believe the content of a positive affirmation to be true, then it could backfire. A study by Wood, Perunovic & Lee (2003) evaluated the effectiveness of positive self statements. The results concluded that for people with low self esteem, positive self statements can be ineffective and can cause the person’s feelings about themselves and their mood to feel worse!! For people with high self esteem, positive self statements were shown to lead to a small increase in positive feelings and mood. The authors of the study outline that “Repeating positive self-statements may benefit certain people, but backfire for the very people who ‘‘need’’ them the most.”

Self talk is a popular technique in the field of sports psychology, but there is surprisingly little evidence to support its benefit… however, Moran (2004) outlines that self talk may be useful in performances, as it can direct our attention to focus on key cues and demands related to a performance.

So with all this confusion, how can you best use self talk to support your performance in any given situation? Try the following tips:

Keep self talk positively phrased, emphasising what you should do, instead of what you should avoid. For example, “I can choose healthy food options”, rather than “don’t eat junk food!”, or “relax my shoulders and breath deeply” rather than “don’t make any mistakes!.”
Don’t use positive affirmations you don’t believe to be true – instead, find a statement that focuses your attention on something you can control or focus on.
Keep positive statements focused on things within your control, for example “Take a deep breath to relax,” “soft grip,” “focus on your posture,” “if I make a mistake, take a breath and start again” etc.
Keep it short and simple, and as vivid as possible, to focus your attention on cues relevant to the task. Try a trigger word related to performance cues like “relax”, “energise!” “soft tone” etc.
Use past successes to boost your confidence – rather than a general positive affirmation “I rock at public speaking!,” you could focus your self talk on a past successful performance “I felt confident when I gave a speech at last month’s team meeting and received great feedback!”

Do you ever use self talk to help you to focus at work, during sports, or when giving performances? Would you try this?