how to fix your procrastination habit?

You have to get things started. That’s the first step in fixing procrastination. Timeboxing will help you do that. The Timeboxing concept is about allocating or boxing a specific set of time like 1 or 2 hours, 20-45 minutes for a task depending upon its importance and efforts.

How the Timeboxing Works?

1. Take a sheet of paper. Write all the tasks waiting for you.
2. Right next to every task, mention what you want to accomplish with these tasks. Define your goals here.
3. Pick tasks that are important and require immediate attention. For those tasks, give priority and allocate 1 to 2.5 Hrs. of time to work on it.
4. Now, identify tasks that take the minimum time say within 15-40 minutes to complete.
5. If there is a difficult and lengthy task, segregate it. And, for each block allocate a minimum 20-30 minutes to manage and work. Depending upon the blocks, you can allocate more time too.
6. Now you can either start from ‘minimum-time’ tasks or ‘more-time’ tasks.
7. Start executing tasks.
8. When the allocated time for a task is over, stop it.
9. You can take a break. See what you have accomplished.
10. See what you have accomplished.
11. Now, move on to other tasks with another timebox.

How Timeboxing helps with procrastination?

1. It will get you started.
2. By knowing that you will work on a task for a little time, you will break weariness and restlessness.
3. Thoughts like “It’s only an hour of work” or “just a few minutes of work” will motivate you.
4. You will get something done instead of procrastinating and doing unimportant tasks.

If you are highly procrastinating and don’t know how to stop it, try Timeboxing. Work within a fixed time box and discontinue the work after the time expires.