What are the best ways to manage procrastination?
It's human nature to put things off, but chronic procrastination can get in the way of work and life. Psychologist Tamar Chansky, MD, who specializes in anxiety, offers tips for breaking the procrastination habit.
Transcript
If you procrastinate, know that you are not alone. It's a national epidemic.
But there are many things that we can do to avoid or manage our tendencies to procrastinate.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Think about what is procrastination about? We're putting off something that, no surprise, we know we have to take care of, and no surprise again,
we probably do know how to take care of. But what we do is avoid it altogether,
and then, we create these 11th hour pressures where we are gonna feel anxious because we have, you know,
kinda backed ourselves into a corner. What's the alternative? Many different things that you can do. One is to give yourself a chance to just look
at what you need to do. Let's say you have a bunch of emails you have to return, but you just don't feel like you can deal with it,
or you have letters you need to open, but you just can't-- you can't do it, or you have a report to start, and you feel like, I can't.
It's the I can't syndrome. Give yourself five minutes to look at that project
and size it up. When you actually look at what you need to do, what you may find is it's only gonna take an hour,
or you start to get ideas about how you're going to tackle that problem. Then you don't want to avoid it anymore,
then you're on the track of on your way to completion, then you're actually motivated to get in there.
So that's really important, is just to not hide. Don't play hide and seek with your work. Take a look, time-limited, and see that it's something
that you can do. Another really helpful strategy along the same lines is to set up your launching pad for the work you have to do.
Let's say you do have this report that you need to write, but you really just haven't wanted to do it. Get all the pieces together that you need to write it.
Set up the papers, and the pens, your laptop, whatever it is, the files you need.
Set it all up and then walk away. Walk away for, you know, 15 minutes or whatever.
When you come back, everything's set up for you, and then you're able to start. Because a lot of what procrastination is about
is not being able to handle a transition. Well, when you set up your desk and walk away, when you come back, you're already
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