How to avoid procrastination

In this article, you will find effective tips on how to avoid procrastination even before it occurs.

If you are already procrastinating and want advice on how to stop procrastinating, I recommend the articles 10 tips to stop procrastinating and 11 tips to fight against procrastination at work and at home.

This article focuses on strategies that allow you to act upstream to prevent procrastination from occurring and becoming a permanent fixture in your daily life.

Here are my 6 tips for avoiding procrastination:

1 – Focus on tasks at higher risk of procrastination

2 – Identify the precursors of your procrastination

3 – Define the consequences of your procrastination

4 – Facilitate the implementation of the desired behavior

5 – Improve your lifestyle

6 – Meet productive people

Check out my first tip now.

1 – Focus on tasks at higher risk of procrastination

You don’t procrastinate for all tasks but you do it for a set of specific tasks.

One effective way to avoid procrastination is to make a list of these activities and create a procedure to follow.

If you don’t, you will become a victim of procrastination.

As with any other habit, it operates automatically and becomes a very likely behavior through repetition.

By establishing a new behavioral option that is precise and easy to follow, you will create a new alternative to bypass procrastination.

2 – Identify the precursor factors of your procrastination

Now that you have compiled a list of tasks that you may put off until tomorrow, it is important to understand what is going on before procrastination takes place.

Here is a list of factors that can lead you to procrastination:

your internal dialogue and more precisely the meaning you give to situations
the behavior of others: superiors, colleagues, friends, spouse, etc.
a specific time of day when you have low energy
your beliefs about your ability to perform a given task
aversion to an unpleasant task for you
the desire to do things perfectly and at the same time the fear of the judgment of others

After identifying the precursors to your procrastination, find a solution in advance to avoid falling back into the trap.

If, for example, you think you are not capable of performing a task well, think of everything you can do to become more competent or to delegate it to another person if possible.

If your internal dialogue is not benevolent, then try to modify the words you use and notice how you feel now and how it positively impacts your behavior.

As with the previous advice, the important thing is to have one or more alternatives to procrastination.

3 – Define the consequences of your procrastination

As we have seen in previous articles on this subject, procrastination can have extremely negative consequences for physical and mental health.

In addition, procrastination can also have real consequences on your professional and social life.

A particularly effective way to avoid procrastination is to list the real impact of your behavior throughout your life, and then dramatize it to increase your motivation to prevent procrastination at work and in your private life.

Here are some suggestions that can help you identify the real consequences of your procrastination.

Imagine that you procrastinate too much in the performance of a professional task. For example, your manager asks you to finish the job for which you do not feel competent and that you do not have the courage to ask for help and instead of explaining the situation, you procrastinate again and again.

What would be the consequences of your procrastination?

For example.

Be summoned to your manager’s office
Receive a warning
Get fired
Empty your bank account
Become homeless

If focusing on the consequences of this procrastination for yourself is not enough to motivate you, you can do this same exercise by applying it to one or more people important to you.

4 – Facilitate the implementation of the desired behavior

In the previous articles, I told you about the importance of everything you can do in advance to facilitate the implementation of your change.

An effective way to avoid procrastination is to make it easier to achieve the target behavior.

To do this, you can use the power of contextual factors, that is, behaviors, objects, or anything else that helps you act the way you want.

I invite you to write a list of factors that put you in an ideal mental state to meet your commitments.

It can be something on your desk that reminds you of what makes you work so hard day after day. It can be music that puts you in a good mood and positively impacts your mind.

The goal is to test the effectiveness of different elements that make your life easier and at the same time allow you to replace unproductive habits with behaviors that improve the overall quality of your life.

5 – Improve your lifestyle

In some cases, procrastination may depend on your lifestyle. For example, we have seen in articles on the same subject that people who have poor sleep quality or who do not get enough sleep are more likely to procrastinate.

If you are tired, you have less physical and mental energy and less concentration to carry out your tasks, especially since the task is complex.

If you are affected by this situation, it is therefore essential to correct this behavior and overcome sleep procrastination to regain restful sleep.

Your diet also plays a role in your behavior. For this, it is important to focus on foods that allow you to keep an optimal level of energy throughout the day.

6 – Spend more time productive people

Procrastination is above all the result of an individual choice. But in some cases, you can procrastinate because of others.

Whether it is your professional life or your private life, you can be exposed to procrastination because of the bad influence that certain people can exert on you.

The most important thing is to realize that in this case, you procrastinate by simply imitating unproductive and socially shared behavior that has become a norm.

Now that you know, find more productive alternatives to take action and avoid procrastination.

If you can, try to keep people behind your procrastination out of your life and take advantage of the beneficial influence of highly productive individuals.

In this way, not only will you avoid procrastination but in addition, you will become more efficient and fulfilled in your professional life as well as in your private life.

Conclusion on how to avoid procrastination

In this article, I have presented 6 tips to prevent procrastination from taking place in your professional and personal life.

As you may have understood, having a proactive attitude towards procrastination is the secret to keeping it away from your life.

If you are interested in the topic of productivity, I invite you to discover all my articles on productivity.

If you are looking for tools to improve your time management skills, I recommend you read my article on the best time management apps.

If you want to learn how to manage your time, I invite you to find out more about our online time management course.

To learn more about how to beat procrastination, write to us through our contact form to take advantage of the expertise of a time management coach.

If you are ready to take action, check out our life coaching packages:

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Français : Comment éviter la procrastination
Italiano: Come evitare la procrastinazione