You’ve fixed your goals and deadlines and now it’s time to make these new behaviours stick.   

Today, tomorrow, sometime, never is how procrastination works. We all do this to some degree, although we’re mostly self-aware enough to know we’re fooling ourselves.

Remedies can be indicated by pinpointing causes: lack of clear goals, poor prioritising and a collapse of willpower arising from misplaced perfectionism. The following are also common.

·    Weak motivation.

·    Lack of skills.

·    Poor time management.

·    Low energy or poor health.

·    Fear of the task, its consequences, even of success.

·    Addiction to last-minute adrenalin rushes.

·    A delusion that you work better that way.

So consider the following solutions:

·    De-chunk the tasks you have on. Break them down into segments and get some of the simpler boxes ticked right away!

·    ‘Just get the file out’ is an approach I recommend and use.

·    Compile a ‘for and against’ list, itemising the risks and consequences involved in not doing a job.

·    Impose a deadline on yourself and offer yourself a reward for meeting it.

·    Go public. Tell people you’re going to do it and so commit yourself.

And lest you are under any delusion:

‘Procrastination is, hands down, our favourite form of self-sabotage’, Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby

 Have you signed up for your free monthly personal development email?  Written by an accountant for the accountant, email info@theaccountantscoach.com