4 Tips to Combat Procrastination As An Entrepreneur

It’s the beginning of the week, you’ve geared yourself up for your most productive day ever and you’re REALLY going to go for it 🙌

Instead, you find yourself clicking refresh on your emails, endlessly scrolling on social media, and reacting to every message, call, and text you receive.

The (not-so) wonderful world of procrastination - we all know it all too well.

Procrastination is a HOT topic in the biz world.

And that’s because so many of us struggle with it at some point or another.

So why do people do it? And more importantly, how do you get out of the habit?

Mel Robbins has a great technique to break the habit.

A couple of the main reasons why people procrastinate are:

😒 They find the task boring or tedious

😒 Perfectionism

While the first reason makes sense - we all need a nudge in the right direction sometimes to do those tasks we just really don’t enjoy…

It feels counterintuitive that wanting to get things done right means you don’t do them AT ALL… right?

As soon as you can identify WHY you’re procrastinating on something, though, you can start to course-correct and get back to knocking your goals out of the park ✨

If your procrastination is caused by a sense of perfectionism, there are some tips that can really help you out.

Tip 1 - Shut out distractions or interruptions

It takes the average person around 20 minutes to recover from EVERY interruption. And that time quickly adds up over the course of a working day.

This happens every time you stop what you’re doing to read an email, answer the phone or quickly search for something on Google.

Limit your email notifications to set times of the day, do the same with phone calls and if you do have an amazing idea or query you just HAVE to search, jot it down on a piece of paper and add it to your list for when you have time.

Tip 2 - Reduce the perceived size of the tasks you have to do

When a task feels too large, or brain-intensive, often it gets put to the bottom of the list because it just feels too much.

That’s when doing simple tasks and time-wasting becomes so much more appealing than the things that will actually move your business forward.

Spend some time breaking down these bigger tasks into smaller chunks - there are two benefits to doing this. First, you won’t feel like you have SUCH a big job on your hands, but psychologically you’ll reward yourself every time you tick off one of these smaller tasks - HOORAY!

Before you know it, you’re on a productivity roll and you’re well on your way to getting things done.

Tip 3 - Remind yourself of your WHY

We all have the big reason WHY we get up and do what we do every day, but it can sometimes get lost among all the other comings and goings of biz life.

Find ways to remind yourself every day of why you do what you do.

Whether it’s creating a vision board and putting it somewhere in clear view of your desk, a photo of loved ones, or a meditation you do regularly, find the way that works for your goals.

My next tip is for those of you who procrastinate on the tasks you find boring, or tedious…

Tip 4 - Delegate

If you don’t delegate, there’s only one person who can ever do these tasks for you - YOU.

And let me tell you, if you don’t enjoy those tasks now, it’s fairly unlikely that they’re ever going to be the things you get excited about every week.

Don’t have anyone in your team you can delegate these tasks to? It’s time to bring in a virtual assistant: an expert in those things you don’t love doing in your biz.

Book a FREE call with me at selinajohnson.com/hire-us to dig into where a VA can shine in your business!

All the best,

Selina