How to Stop Procrastinating

Procrastination feels like an inevitable part of professional life. We’ve all been guilty of it at some point.

Many people will tell you just to push through it, but this can be terrible advice when you’re lacking the motivation or energy to even get started in the first place. Being made to feel lazy won’t get you in a good headspace to finish that project or get started on your larger professional goals.

Instead, you need some real ways to cope with what makes you procrastinate and stop getting in your own way.

Here are some tried and true solutions for procrastinating, from simple tasks you can do right now to lifestyle changes that can help your overall productivity.

Related: 19 Life-Changing Productivity Hacks

How to Stop Procrastinating and Actually Get Work Done

1. Understand Why You’re Procrastinating

Ask yourself: Why am I putting this off?

It could be for so many reasons. Maybe you’re overthinking things or you’re feeling overwhelmed. It could be that you have too many distractions pulling your focus. Or maybe you just aren’t feeling at your best right now.

Dig deep and explore what’s keeping you from your task at this moment. If it’s something as simple as having too many distractions, you can make some quick changes to help with that.

2. Turn Off Your Phone Notifications

Give yourself a work space where you can eliminate most, if not all, of your distractions. Most people have their phone as their biggest source of distraction, so do everything you can to keep yourself focused on the project at hand instead.

The simple tactic is to silence your phone or to leave it in another room, but that can only work for so long. Instead, go into your different apps and turn off notifications. Make sure that social media, emails, texts, and every other little ping is disabled so that you won’t have any sounds or even visible push notifications telling you that you have something new to look at.

You can also try extensions on your web browser to remove the temptation as well. Try something like News Feed Eradicator for Facebook, which takes away the news feed so that you can’t scroll through Facebook at all.

3. Keep a Tidy Space

An unclean, disorganized work space could be a source of distraction for you, or it could be contributing to that feeling of being overwhelmed. No matter which effect it’s having on you, you should clean up your space.

The old adage is true: If your environment is cluttered, then your mind will be cluttered. Just don’t use the act of cleaning up your space as an excuse to keep putting off your work, though.

4. Break Down Your Project

Still feeling overwhelmed? Next you should try breaking down your project or plan into specific, actionable tasks. This makes it feel like you can actually accomplish it rather than feeling like it’s too big to be tackled.

Figure out what step-by-step actions you need to take, and think out their logical order. Create a timeline to keep you on task.

Are there any steps you can delegate? Do it and take that off your plate. If you are acting as a project manager and assigning work to other people, then stagger the completion dates so that you don’t have everything land back on your desk all at once and ruin all the work you did to feel less overwhelmed.

5. Have Someone Else To Hold You Accountable

When you tell another person about your goals, then you’re more likely to follow through. This is because you’ve reinforced the idea by saying it out loud, but also because you now have someone else to keep you accountable.

This person doesn’t have to be another coworker. Instead, you can reach out to a mentor or someone in your online network about what you’re trying to accomplish. Your network should include other inspiring, engaging people with a strong professional-development mindset of their own. These people can be an inspiration to you along the way.

Keeping someone else in the loop on your progress is great because not only can they push you along, but they can also offer advice on how they think you can get done what you need to.

6. Get Better Sleep

So you’ve taken some steps to eliminate your distractions and try to feel less overwhelmed. But how are you actually feeling, in your mind and in your body? You might honestly just be tired. And that’s understandable.

You should truly focus on getting the best, most restful sleep that you can. Remember how you should turn off your phone’s notifications while you’re working? You should also turn off your phone long before trying to fall asleep. That bright light is doing nothing to help your circadian rhythm.

You should also avoid caffeine as much as possible later on in the day. After six hours, half of that caffeine is still in your system, messing up your sleep cycle.

This step is also something that you’re going to need to incorporate over the long term, like building up your online network. But the rewards will be so worth it.

7. Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

While you do need a strong network of professional people to inspire and support you, you should also remember that you’re not in a competition with them. You can’t compare yourself to someone who’s ahead of you on a professional trajectory because it will send you down a bad spiral.

When you don’t feel good about yourself, you won’t take any action and instead will do something that makes you feel good in that moment — like scrolling on your phone or eating junk food. But because you didn’t take any real action toward finishing your project, you’re going to feel even worse afterwards, creating a negative feedback loop.

Instead, focus on yourself, what you’ve done so far, and what you’re capable of doing now.