Procrastination: waste time efficiently 7 times - & how to do it better!

Procrastination is so easy. You just have to do it intelligently and you always have the right excuse ready to get into the dirge about too much Stress and agree to work. It also makes your job easier to do.

Important things are unattractive - but why only?

There's this law of nature that you're probably familiar with: What's really important and urgent suddenly loses its appeal as soon as we make a firm commitment to do it now. For this to practice all the small, irrelevant ones Tasks and activities that we bravely try to ignore suddenly have an irresistible pull on us.

After all, at the end, we end up with the sweet temptation of procrastination. The reason might be, as we will learn below, that we always want to do what is easiest.

Procrastinate in style - 7 tips

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So before we discover countermeasures, we share 7 tips on how to deal with a lot Style procrastinates – be careful, they may contain traces of irony:

1. Rearrange the workplace.  Always a great, because time-consuming occupation: Rethink and systematize the arrangement of the tools. In the ideal case, it costs so much time that you do not need to do any more with your actual work.
2. Waiting for inspiration.  Especially in creative professions a popular pastime: Just wait until your muse kisses. Works guaranteed, because of course, creativity and inspiration are preferred in deserted, lonely places. Meanwhile you can spend a few working days around.
3. Computer stuff. : You wanted to photoshoppen still the last vacation photos, and of course you have to do that exactly NOW. Or you want to write a business letter, blog post or something else, but have the impression that the typeface is not ideal yet? Congratulations, with such tasks you can spend hours.
4. Internet research and social media.  You can lose a lot of time if you are foraging the internet and get on the stick from the little wood. Even more effective for procrastination is not only to search for the found content, but also to share it with others via social media - because still a video divided, here a picture sent - and of course you have to respond to comments then.
5. To eat and drink.  Granted, that's vital. It is even more important to stand in front of the fridge every five minutes. That's definitely great for the character.
6. Sleep.  That too is important. All the better, if a comfortable sofa is in the office and you can always slouch on it - because a long sleep brings more synonymous for productivity than short Naps in between.
7. Cleaning.  Also very important. What a cleaning lady looking for, if you can do that little bit of household on your own - and doing a nice job in your own job.

Procrastination usually with simple activities

And what are your favourites? Strategies for successful procrastination? What do you like to be distracted by? Just create a corresponding list.

If you take a closer look at this list, you will find a common denominator in all activities: All things are relatively simple and fast completed. They just caused a lot of stress in the LongTail because important tasks were left undone because of them.

Decrease the activation energy

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This leads to a very simple conclusion: you have to reduce the necessary activation energy for tasks that you want to do. And, conversely, increase it with tasks that distract us from the essentials. Because studies show: If we need more than 20 seconds to start something, we lose it Lust.

Here is an example: My personal favorite procrastination is this eMail-P.O. Box. I have this as a practical web app in the browser gebookmarket. If I now delete this bookmark and first have to laboriously find the link, it will probably take me a lot longer. Seen in this way, push notifications are of course poisonous for our productivity.

Clear the path of least resistance for us

I can also trick myself with re-entering passwords in this way. On the other hand, when I finally have to tackle the tax return, I know why programs like Lexoffice really make my work easier: I used to only collect receipts on the day of the tax return, since I now always do this in between, it's a mountain of work clear become smaller and the desire to just get started has grown.

We People take the path of least resistance. We should therefore make sure that this path leads straight to the positive results or good habits. We must pave the way for ourselves accordingly.

Prepare the work of tomorrow in the evening

Lots of suggestions for changing habits or overcoming procrastination follow this Pattern. For example, the habit of doing the work of the following day the night before to plan. Getting the first work for the next morning ready on the desk in the evening. Or to put the yoga mat next to the bed if you want to start the next day with a yoga session.

The Idea is always the same: The Energy, which is needed for the start of the task to be kept as low as possible. Conversely, the idea of ​​"distraction-free" software is based on this principle, when the browser is simply blocked or I have certain applications blocked on the computer. With such software, one can build hurdles in front of one's bad habits.

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