Procrastination is a stress response. People procrastinate when they feel overwhelmed or anxious about moving forward pushing their brain into ‘freeze’ mode. It can happen to us all and putting pressure on someone who is procrastinating will only make things worse.

Use one of these approaches to help you overcome procrastination:

• Break the task down into smaller pieces you feel you can achieve
• Buddy up with someone you can ‘check in’ with. They need to be supportive and not someone who will ‘tell you off’. This helps you stay on track and gives you someone to talk out difficulties with.
• Be clear on why this is important for you and keep that in the forefront of your mind
• Get coaching or training for any capabilities you feel you lack
• Find a first step sometimes it helps to get started with something small

Not every approach will work with everyone who’s procrastinating, this is because the reasons are different for each person, so try a few and see what they respond to best.

John and Karen’s book Time Mastery; Banish Time Management Forever will help you to find a way that avoids procrastination completely. You can buy it from Amazon in paperback or e book version here.

Using Hypnosis is very effective for overcoming procrastination, download one of John’s tracks designed for Procrastination here

Do you work with Procrastinators? Next months article is all about how leaders can help their teams overcome procrastination.
Read the last Great Minds Think Differently article on time management here where you can also sign up to receive the next one direct to your inbox