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Do you sometimes busy yourself with a bit of “procrasti-working”? 

Procrasti-working

VERB: To work on unimportant tasks in order to delay working on important ones.

Ever found yourself cleaning your desk instead of working on that important report? 

How about spending extra time making your PowerPoint slides look good when you should be practising presenting them?

And reading new emails to avoid creating that project plan?

We all do it.

And we look productive and busy in the moment.

Buuuutttt… This is just another way your brain gets you out of feeling uncomfortable. And unfortunately, the result is you end up falling behind or not completing important work.

And if you keep giving in to this urge to work on unimportant things, your brain will get better at doing it.

The only way out is to break the habit by interrupting your brain at that moment and then follow through with the important task.

The tactic that works best for me is to create a pre-planned response that I can tell myself WHY I want to work on the important (but also uncomfortable) task.

Here’s what I tell my brain whenever I find myself procrasti-working:

“I know you want to do the easy things, but this is not helping me achieve my goal. This is just a habit and in order to break this habit I must follow through on what I planned to do right now.”

You can create your own response to your brain whenever you find yourself keeping you busy on something that isn’t helping you achieve your goal / or what you planned to do.

Even reminding yourself that procrasti-working is just a habit and that the only way to break it is to stop doing it, will be helpful.

TAKE ACTION:

• Think about the times when you find yourself procrasti-working. Perhaps this is a particular type of task or time of day.
• Create your planned response to your brain to remind yourself why you don’t want to continue procrasti-working
• Whenever you find yourself procrasti-working interrupt the habit by telling yourself your planned response and then follow through on the important work you have planned to do
• COACHING: If you want to know more about how to overcome procrastination and double your productivity, then book a free consultation with me here.