The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article on how to stop procrastinating and how to start taking steps towards what is important to you. Procrastinating causes stress, which can effect every aspect of your life from your job to your relationships to your finances. Dealing with daunting situations and decisions in bite-size pieces can provide an avenue to getting things done and reducing stress.
To Procrastinate Less, Start by Doing This
Tips from research led by Timothy Pychyl, Piers Steel and Alexander Rozental.
- Break a long-term project down into specific sub-goals. State the exact start time and how long (not just “tomorrow”) you plan to work on the task.
- Just get started. It isn’t necessary to write a long list of tasks, or each intermediate step.
- Remind yourself that finishing the task now helps you in the future. Putting off the task won’t make it more enjoyable.
- Implement “microcosts,” or mini-delays, that require you to make a small effort to procrastinate, such as having to log on to a separate computer account for games.
- Reward yourself not only for completing the entire project but also the sub-goals.
Read the full article here: http://on.wsj.com/1N5MR2H
Originally published in the Wall Street Journal by Shirley Wang on August 31, 2015