How to Avoid Procrastination

I’m sure I’m not alone on this. I have a list of “To-Do’s” a mile long that I just never seem to get to. Life gets in the way sometimes. But no matter why you are putting it off, here are some ways to avoid procrastination.

Is It Laziness??

I’ll be the first to tell you that some people DO procrastinate because they are lazy. But this is not always the case. Is there something on your list that absolutely needs to be done but you would rather sleep? That is quite possibly laziness.

But other factors affect why we put things off. Depression can cause you to not want to do anything. If you think this is the case, please find a counselor or therapist to help you. The issue is bigger than just not cleaning the house.

Time Traps

The biggest reason I see people putting off doing things is that they get sucked into time traps. The biggest one in today’s culture is social media. We spend hours scrolling through our news feed instead of being productive with our time.

If you can watch 3 hours of cute cat videos on the internet, why don’t you have the time to clean your bathroom?

But guilt is not going to help you to avoid procrastination. Finding reasonable tools to put into your arsenal will.

Perfectionism

This is another biggie, second only to time traps. The avoidance of starting a project because you feel that if you can’t do it perfectly, there is no point in even starting. Social media has a lot to do with this problem too.

All of the gorgeous photos you see on Pinterest and Instagram are highly doctored. Trying to measure up to those perfectly clean and organized photos while still living in your home is unrealistic. No offense, but your kids are never going to sit completely still and never move anything.

So what do you do if you have these perfectionistic tendencies?

Use them in smaller ways. So a small task absolutely perfectly and save the rest for later. Say you have an entire house that needs to be vacuumed, but you have a limited amount of time. Focus on one room, and doing it perfectly. You can use your tendencies, and yet still accomplish something.

Prioritizing to Avoid Procrastination

This is a biggie for me. I always have a huge to-do list but obviously, I don’t have the time to do everything. So every morning I look at the list and make a daily list with each task in order of importance.

For example:

Currently I am in the middle of painting one of the rooms in our home. It’s a fun project, but if I focus too much on doing that, other chores are neglected. So, even though painting is what I want to do, I place more importance on my list to daily cleaning. I make sure that I do the dishes and laundry before I jump into the project that I really want to work on.

By making sure things that NEED done are finished before moving onto things that I want to do, more actually gets done over the course of the day.

Other Ways to Avoid Procrastination

Maybe your task seems too large. Does the entire house need to be cleaned? Write down each room on a piece of paper and just do one room at a time. Breaking down large projects into more manageable segments can give you more of a sense of accomplishment and motivate you to do more.

Do you need to find an accountability partner? Creating a group of friends who have similar tasks and goals to hold one another accountable can help tremendously. Ask your friends if they’d like to join you in a Spring Cleaning accountability group. You tackle one project a day (or every week) and then keep one another one track.

Avoid Procrastination in Baby Steps

Just because your list is longer than what you get done does not make you lazy. Get off the guilt train and start doing small things to motivate yourself. Maybe you can reward yourself with a new kitchen gadget you’ve been wanting once you finish reorganizing the kitchen (leaving space in the layout for the new gadget, of course).

Find ways to keep yourself doing small things. You’ll create a habit of completion, and it will snowball into getting even more done in your home.