Jan 27, 2012

Tough love to deal with procrastination

Tough love to deal with procrastination I always say to people that they should put procrastination off until tomorrow! I think most people procrastinate – it’s a strategy many of us use to put off doing the stuff we need to get done but are afraid we will fail or succeed at.

I was checking out paper.li, a great resource to publish a niche online newspaper about your interest if you are on Twitter and very simple to set up, when I came across this brilliant framed poster.

Sometimes you need to be tough on yourself to get out of the procrastination rut. Give yourself a good talking to and listen carefully. You also need to recognise the difference between procrastination and when you have just driven yourself so hard you have lost your mental energy. We are often intolerant of our perceived failures especially if we work from home. Remember one of the useful beliefs for blogging success – ‘There is no failure – only feedback’. It’s no good beating yourself up when you are already battered from a long day at the office.

Perhaps the point I’m trying to make is that we need to use both high challenge and high support in equal measure in order to maximise our performance and be as productive as we can be. Too much self challenge stresses us out. Too much support makes us too comfortable and leads to distraction and procrastination to fill the time.

So stop messing around and get on with it – and throw a bit of love into the mix.

Poster image thanks to Neil Humphrey of Studio Maximus

You can buy the anti-procrastination poster here

By Andy Britnell Personal Development, Procrastination 28 Comments Tags: , , , ,