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Procrastination – Causes and Solutions

What is procrastination? Procrastination is the habit of putting off for later or tomorrow what you really should do now or at least today. It has also been described as the "thief of time."  Many people will acknowledge that procrastination is a character flaw, but most of us have been guilty of putting off something important we should be doing for our business today. 

The reasons for procrastination in your home-based business are many but interestingly we usually put off tasks that do not appeal to us.  It may be because we find them monotonous, they may be necessary to our business, but we wish we did not have to do them ourselves, or they may involve too much hard work.Today I'm starting a series on Procrastination – Causes and  Solutions.

Large, Overwhelming Tasks:

You know something is important to your business, online or offline, but it looms like a huge insurmountable mountain.  Just thinking about it overwhelms you to the point where you feel there is no way you can do this.  For example, you've started your online business and you've been told that one of the best activities to start with is Blogging.  You probably listened to a Teleseminar or read that WordPress.org is the best blogging platform; however, your technical skills are limited and you've tried but can't seem to make any headway with setting it up.

Rather than giving up and decide that blogging is not for you, start with one of the free blogging platforms like blogger.com.  That's where I began but once my Mentor advised me to change to a paid platform she recommended WordPress.org or TypePad.com and I found TypePad.com a lot less challenging. There's always going to be a learning curve, but break your task into small chunks of tasks and time.  In this case TypePad has an excellent Knowledge Base that you will need to take time to read.  As you accomplish each section you move to the next – one step at a time.  Keep in mind that even if it takes you a week to set up the blog at the end of the week you would have made huge strides in your online business.  When you make your first post you will get such a feeling of accomplishment and a sense of satisfaction that the challenges you had to overcome to get to that point will fade into the background.

On the other hand, if you really dislike doing something you are definitely more likely to procrastinate and your aim should be to stop procrasting, and break the cycle.  In this case it may be more advantageous to delegate this task to someone else or hire someone to do it. You likely will have to pay for the service but it will be a worthwhile expense.  Not only will you get it done quickly and efficiently, but your time can be spent doing the things you enjoy. 

There are some things I find challenging because they are not in my area of expertise, but find that when I make my Things to Do list the night before and schedule them for the early part of the day my day goes more smoothly and I'm more productive. They are out of the way and I can focus on the things I like to do the rest of the day. Perhaps that would work for you as well.

Please feel free to leave your comments of how you deal with handling large,overwhelming tasks in your home-based business.