How to Be A Decision Maker Not A Procrastinator

“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday,” says American journalist, novelist, poet and playwright Donald Marquis. How true! Procrastination is perhaps among the easiest traps to fall into and could be the deciding factor between success and failure. Think Hamlet and you get the picture. The worst thing about procrastination, however, is NOT that you easily succumb to it. The worst thing is that its symptoms are not blatant.

Thus, the first step in overcoming procrastination is to identify whether you are a procrastinator. Are you spending hours reading your emails over and over and doing nothing about working on them? Have you been waiting for the ‘right moment’ to start a job that has been long pending? Do you sort your ‘to-do’ lists according to the simpler or more enjoyable tasks being given priority even over the more important ones? If so, you are a procrastinator.

The second step in becoming a decision maker versus being a procrastinator is to consider why you are procrastinating. The reasons may be:

• You find a task or decision unpleasant.
• You are generally disorganized.
• You lack confidence in your ability to complete the task.
• You like the adrenalin rush and put off tasks that do not challenge you enough.

The third step in becoming a decision maker rather than a procrastinator is to take remedial action. The choice of actions and their relative importance lie in the reasons for which you put off certain tasks. Here are a few tips that will help you to be a decision maker and stop procrastinating.

Create Activity Logs: These are records of what you spend your time doing. They can also help you identify the parts of the day in which you are most active and alert. Activity logs will help you spend more time on more critical tasks and do them when you are most energetic.

Priority List: Make a list of all the activities you need to prioritize. You need to differentiate between urgent and important tasks. Make a list of all the activities and prioritize the urgent ones first, the important ones next and then come the others.

Baby Steps: Set up goals and deadlines, but let them not be mammoth. Smaller schedules allow you to track your progress more effectively and reward yourself more frequently. The goals could be in the form of a ‘to-do’ list.

Support System: These are things that motivate you to do those tasks that you would typically procrastinate. This may include rewards, you being answerable to a friend who is helping you to become a decision maker or considering the negative consequences of not getting the tasks done.

Stopping procrastination is not as difficult as it seems at first. So, don’t procrastinate on beginning this journey!