We all know the feeling: There is a long list of things you “should” be doing – write content, market your small business, or finally clean up those messy collections of stuff in your home, but there never seems to be enough time. As the list of postponed to-do’s keeps growing, it is difficult to know where to start. Sometimes it even seems easier to accept another urgent project instead.
If procrastination has been a challenge for you for a while, you’ve likely heard countless lectures about managing your time and daydreaming. You’ve read advice about getting up earlier, eating frogs, and entering tasks into apps – but you’re still struggling to finish the things you really want to do.
That’s because procrastination is not about time, it is about managing your emotions and your thoughts about specific tasks. The approaches we find to handle complex tasks are driven by our inner dialog. If you live in a doom loop of half-finished projects and great ideas that tend to fizzle out, here are three starting points for changing this unproductive dialog to create a more positive perspective:
People who tend to get lost in procrastination – the gap between intention and action – often benefit from discussing their next steps and following up on their accomplishments. That’s where coaching comes in: a focused conversation on goals and actions without judgment and blame.