How You Can Fight Procrastination With Good Habits

Published October 3, 2012 | Posted in Basic Marketing

by Bonnie Chomica

We usually know what actions we need to do to move our company forward, but often have to fight procrastination to get them done. By creating clearly defined goals and good work habits you can kick procrastination in the booty.

Behavior Study To Fight Procrastination

Data from the 1960s says it takes 21 to 28 days to change or start a new habit. In a recent paper published in European Journal of Social Psychology there is new evidence that it takes 66 days – give or take a week.

Some routines are harder to change or adopt and therefore may take less time, or perhaps a longer time to establish.

For example, if you wanted to develop a behavior to drink a glass of water each day, it wouldn’t take much thought.
If you wanted to run a mile each day, you would have a lot more to consider before that run became a daily habit (clothing, route, weather, time of day, etc).

A number of people also seem habit-resistant, and are not always willing to change or grow. So, it is not just about saying your going to change your habit, you have to have the frame of mind to want to do it, also.

Fighting Procrastination With Different Levels of Goals

When I first started to fight my procrastinating habits, I started breaking down bigger jobs or activities in my personal life. Even something as simple as a stack of dishes, or cleaning my desk can be broken down into smaller bits.

I fight procrastination by rethinking about a whole job that might take an hour. Instead, I break it into smaller tasks that might take twenty minutes each. Then the ‘whole job’ doesn’t seem so daunting.

You can similarly fight procrastination with your business challenges. You should have extensive, big picture goals for your life and your business, but you should also have daily, weekly and monthly goals to tackle all the tasks and challenges that come your way.

Say you wanted to write an e-book, or add a new page to your website. There are lots of factors you need to consider for each of these undertakings. And unless you can commit the time to focus on just one project (which most of us can’t), break the job down into bite size chunks.

Spend 30 minutes a day on it and you can make progress in no time. If it takes you 10 working days at 60 minutes a day, that equals a total of 10 hours to complete your project. If you waited until you had 10 spare hours to work on a web page or an e-book it would never get done. Not on my schedule, for sure.

To summarize, your ultimate goal is to create something. Your daily goal is focus on it for 30 minutes. Your weekly or monthly goal is the timeline to finish the project.

Different Options to Fight Procrastination

So, we have talked about working on changing habits, and setting goals, but what else can you do to fight procrastination?

Learn to be accountable. You are solely responsible for your business and its success. No one else.

In college or at a job, someone always tells you what to work on. As an entrepreneur, you have to lead yourself.
You are your own boss, so be accountable to yourself.

If you need to, find an accountability partner. Connect with them each week and keep each other on track. Or find a Facebook or Linkedin Group to connect with like-minded people to help each other fight procrastination. Hey, you could even create your own Group.

Tips for Fighting Procrastination

The scope of this post is to take control of your patterns and objectives, and become accountable to yourself and your business. Commit to your own success and take the right actions.