Achieving a can-do mindset
Achieving a can-do mindset!
We all have such busy lives that sometimes the things that we most need to do often take a back seat as we work to earn a living, raise our children, spend time with our families, look after our home etc. The to-do list is endless, the car needs an MOT, I must get the food shopping, I need to buy a present for someone, I need to answer that email and so on and so on.
I used to be a procrastinator. For example, I would receive an invitation to a party, probably a kids party for one of my children back in the day and I would sit on it for ages not replying. Eventually there I would be lastminute.com replying in a hurry because I had left it so long. There were times before everything was paid for online that I would receive a credit card or a store card bill and again, the papers would pile up and eventually just in time, I would pay them. I would often laugh about it with one of my friends who was also a procrastinator and we would laugh about how at the last minute we delay on dealing with something. I don’t think we were laughing because we found it really funny but because I think we were embarrassed about how disorganised we both were.
In those days I was far too busy with raising children, to even admit that this was a problem and when I look back at that time, this was probably why I was always feeling so overwhelmed with raising my children and running my home whilst making time for my family and trying to balance a social life.
It was only when my sons were 16 and 19 and I was going through a divorce that I began to see how procrastination was having a major effect on my life. Suddenly the bills were mounting up and I was stressed running a home on my own and trying to manage the effects of this massive change in our circumstances. My friends were an amazing support and one in particular came round to my home and was shocked at the 5 or so bills and paperwork that I hadn’t yet dealt with. She encouraged me to deal with every bill immediately on the day it came into the house. I was open to suggestions because I needed the support and from that day on I changed my mindset. I was no longer a procrastinator.
I loved the freedom of dealing with things then and there and what I hadn’t realised was the added pressure of leaving things and how even though I knew everything was in ‘an organised pile’, I would be regularly thinking about this pile of papers. Now with my new method of dealing with everything on the day, my head became clear!
Why do we procrastinate?
Quite simply procrastination is fear and anxiety based. We delay dealing with things because there’s fear or we simply don’t like the consequences of dealing with something. Maybe for me paying bills made me feel uncomfortable as there were times when my income was inconsistent so there was trepidation about paying the bills. The main reason we procrastinate is because other tasks seem more enjoyable or more fun or more important to us. We delay dealing with something because the idea of doing something isn’t appealing, we may even dread it even though we are aware of the negative consequences of the delay in dealing with it. The only way is to delay our gratification and deal with the things that we don’t enjoy first.
These are a few methods for helping with procrastination:
Chunking things down - break things into smaller parts by deciding to deal with one or two things per day
Allocate a specific time in your day to deal with the things that need to be done
If you can, answer all invitations immediately
Keep your head clear by lightening your load - clear your inbox and to do list, anything you can’t complete on a specific day, write or put it in your diary for the following day
Decide in your mind that you are going to be more organised and have a can-do mindset!
What is the two-minute rule?
David Allen’s two-minute rule states that “If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it's defined.
There are many ways to overcome procrastination, please reach out to me if you would like some help with being more organised.
