We’ve all been there. You have a huge presentation, project or assignment to complete, but you keep putting it off. You’re completely overwhelmed by the amount of work the task involves and can’t find the motivation to start.

Procrastination is not laziness. There are many psychological factors behind why we procrastinate. Even animals do it! However, if you are finding that putting things off or leaving them to the last minute is getting in the way of your progress or leading to feelings of stress, there are ways to manage it.

In this article, we’ll show you time management techniques that can help you stop procrastinating, as well as strategies to help you stay motivated. Don’t put it off any longer, it’s time to learn how to stop procrastinating once and for all!

Understanding Procrastination

Procrastination is the act of putting off tasks and doing less important tasks instead. While it’s a normal human behaviour and everyone procrastinates from time to time, it can lead to negative consequences if it affects your work or study time.

People procrastinate for many reasons, including believing that they won’t enjoy doing the tasks they need to get done. It can also be a way to avoid negative feelings like anxiety, fear of failure, or the desire to do something perfectly. It can also be the result of poor time management.

Why Time Management Is the Antidote

Once you understand why you put off tasks to the last minute, you can take action to overcome it. When you feel more in control of your workload, you’re less likely to procrastinate. Planning, scheduling and breaking larger tasks into smaller tasks can help you find structure and improve your productivity. These acts of managing time can help whether you’re tackling university commitments, a big project at work or even tasks around the home.

Time Management Skills That Directly Reduce Procrastination

When you have a big task to complete, starting is often the hardest part. However, once you do start, you will feel more motivated, find it easier to ignore distractions and keep going until you have achieved your goal.

There are a few time management strategies that you can use to help overcome procrastination, so try these to find the right one for you.

SMART goals

SMART goals can help with motivation because they give you something tangible to work towards. Set goals by using this acronym:

  • Specific: Be clear about what it is that you want to get done.
  • Measurable: Use targets to help track your progress.
  • Achievable: Don’t set yourself up to fail! Break tasks into smaller pieces if necessary.
  • Realistic: Avoid unnecessary stress by ensuring you have allocated enough time.
  • Timed: Use deadlines to help you stay on track.

Time blocking and batching tasks

Time blocking simply means using a weekly planner to schedule times for particular tasks. Batching means grouping similar tasks together. These techniques allow you to focus on one thing at a time and give you a sense of satisfaction as you’re able to tick things off your to-do list.

A good example of how this can work for college students is by taking a look at the entire semester and using a weekly planner to set aside time each week to work on homework assignments in small chunks. If you work on the assignment for one hour each week for 5 weeks, you won’t have to set aside a whole day to work on it the week before it’s due.

An example of batching tasks could be sitting down to answer all of your emails at once, first thing in the morning. When you’re not constantly switching between different types of tasks, you’ll be more focused and productive.

Prioritisation using the Eisenhower Matrix

The Eisenhower Matrix is essentially about prioritising tasks to help you overcome time management issues. You do this by categorising one of four ways, based on how urgent and important the task is.

The four categories are: Do (the most urgent and important), Decide (not urgent but important), Delegate (urgent but not important), Delete (not urgent nor important).

The 2-Minute Rule

The concept of the 2-minute rule is that if you can complete a task in 2 minutes or less, you should do it straight away instead of adding it to your to-do list. By implementing this idea, you can prevent many smaller tasks from accumulating, giving you more time to spend on other things.

Pomodoro Technique

This technique can help you overcome procrastination by forcing you to focus for short periods of time, getting you closer to your goal sooner. You choose one task to focus on, work on it for 25 minutes, then take a 5-minute break. You repeat this cycle four times before taking a larger break of between 15–30 minutes.

Practical Examples in Work and Study Contexts

Let’s look at some examples of how these time management techniques can help you in work, study and life.

A) You’re a student with a huge assignment to complete before next week. You have been procrastinating, but decide you will use the Pomodoro time management technique to at least get started. You find a quiet place to work, set your timer for 25 minutes and take a short break at the end of the focused period. You complete a full cycle in the morning and one in the afternoon, making great progress on your assignment. After a longer break taking a walk with friends, you even find enough motivation to complete another 100 minutes of work in the evening.

B) You are becoming fed up with having to stay behind at work each day to complete your tasks, though, admittedly, you do lose motivation late in the afternoon and spend a lot of time scrolling social media or chatting with colleagues. You decide to implement time blocking to schedule your day more effectively and in line with when you have the most energy.

Using time blocking, you are more productive in the morning, giving you time to take a short, timed break in the afternoon. This break helps you stay focused for the rest of the work day, meaning that you can now leave the office at 5pm along with your colleagues because you have completed all of your work.

C) At home, you have to paint your living room, but you’ve been putting it off for months. You decide to start the project this weekend, using the SMART goals technique you learned about at work. You set yourself the task of painting just one wall on Sunday afternoon, giving yourself 3 hours to complete it. You take a break after 1 hour and realise you’re more than halfway through and you will achieve what you set out to do even sooner than you anticipated. This gives you to motivation to keep going and you complete the project over the next few weeks.

Tools to Help You Stay on Track

Sometimes, overcoming procrastination can be as simple as using the right tools to help you manage your time. You could try using digital calendars like Microsoft To Do to track deadlines, task managers such as Trello to keep you organised, or apps to help you maintain focus, like Forest or Freedom.

Tips to Build Consistency and Make It Stick

By working on your time management issues, you can overcome the habit of procrastinating. But like all habits, it can take time. Let go of your shame around procrastination and learn what triggers it so that you can anticipate when it’s likely to happen and employ strategies to manage it.

For expert help with time management issues, consider taking a course with Priority Management. Our proven training methods can help you avoid the procrastination pit and work smarter, not harder. Visit our website to book a time management course or call us on 1300 139 126 today.