Problem

Procrastination.

Solution

Change your mindset.

Discussion

Procrastination often amounts to making excuses.

‘I’m too busy.’

‘I’ve too much work’

‘I can’t afford it’

‘I just need to … before I …’

You do it. I do it. We do it.

Recognising that we are in fact not just ‘making excuses’ but actively making choices puts us firmly back in control.

‘I choose to take on these tasks rather than do this.’

‘I choose to prioritise my work over this.’

‘I choose to allocate my money to these things rather than those.’

‘I choose to do this before that.’

By choosing we make ourselves responsible and this can be uncomfortable. Inevitably people protest, ‘but my boss makes me do X, that’s why I have too much work!’ Really? I know that you know there’s a lazy bum at work who seems to get by just fine (maybe even your boss), so how come you can’t? It took me many years to learn that I could manage my work just fine (and still have a good career) by being smart rather than working hard. Okay, I still worked reasonably hard but only sometimes and only when it had a specific purpose (i.e. my ‘smart’ plan required short-term focussed, time-boxed, effort to move on).

Same thing with ‘busy’. I’ve been busy. I still get busy. But here’s the thing; I’m busy because I made choices. I chose to ignore the 80/20 rule. I took on too much and when something came along that I had to focus on (say and accident or a family member falling ill) I found I had no spare capacity. That was a choice past me made and now present me has to cope with the fallout (past me really pisses me off sometimes).

So, what to do?

I try to never schedule more that 80% of my day. This includes things like work, exercise, food preparation, shopping, cleaning, relaxation, everything. Now, I’m not obsessively marking my time out or anything but I have a rough ideal™ and I leave 20% of my day free. Oddly I’m seldom left with time in the day, why?

Simple, the 20% is contingent time. It allows for unforeseen delays (particularly bad traffic, tasks taking longer than expected, etc. If I get my daily tasks done I always have plenty of low level ‘filler’ tasks I can do in the remaining time. These filler tasks are things that are low priority, important, but not time bound (if you’re thinking you can set low priority, unimportant tasks in filler time I would suggest not; low priority, unimportant tasks should be consigned to the ‘never gonna happen’ bin—why would you waste time on unimportant things?).

Is my system perfect? No, but it works most of the time. I seldom find myself with too much to do, but by the same token I seldom find myself with time to waste.