Procrastination might not be your fault, but it is something we should all seek to improve. According to a study at Ruhr-University Bochum, your brain says a lot about you and your tendency to procrastinate. After scanning the brains of over 250 people, it concluded that those with poor action control had larger amygdalas. These individuals tend to experience more anxiety, which drives them to put things off.
While you can’t control the size of your amygdala, there are ways to beat procrastination and get stuff done – it’s time to stop talking about doing things. Look at Facebook’s notorious hack-a-thons when engineer’s pitch tents and pull an all-nighter of collaborating with others to solve programming issues and/or build prototypes – this is a great example of beating procrastination as they are putting plenty of time aside to focus and get things going.
So what are the options for the majority of us procrastinators? It might not be easy, but these methods will work with effort.
Meditate
Well maybe you can control your brain…meditation had been proven to shrink your amygdala. Regardless one should practice mindfulness as it will also keep your anxiety and stress levels down helping you to get your work done.
Break things down
Don’t take on too much at once – it will burn you out and will return poor results. Break down a big job into manageable tasks that you can do over time. This will make that big job a lot less daunting.
Understand why
To enjoy what your work and to give it your best, it’s important to give personal meaning to the task at hand. If and when you come across any challenge, that meaning or reason why will help you pull through.
Be kind
Whatever you do, be kind to yourself. While working through your project, allow time to also enjoy yourself and stay healthy by eating well and getting enough sleep. Avoid being strict with yourself as that will only bring on stress and we all know how dangerous stress can be.
Avoid misconceptions
You do not work better under pressure, your willpower will not just automatically turn on, and your deadlines will not always work. Avoid these excuses because they are not true. It’s been proven that pressure and deadlines causes stress which obviously doesn’t allow you to work better.