“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.”  - Don Marquis

Procrastination is a common problem for majority of individuals and businesses. Here are some tips that can help you stay motivated and avoid procrastination.

Get some tools to organize and remind yourself of the things that need to be done. Having a To-Do list is the easiest way to remind you of your tasks. There are different ways to do this. you can go high-tech and use online tools to keep you organized or you can use notes and calendars on your desk or room’s wall. Here’s a list of online tools:

Google Calendar - it’s free and very easy to use, you can also take your calendar to your desktop using Google Desktop. (I use this myself)
Basecamp - it’s not free but is a great tool. This one is more suitable for businesses to use since it’s more project based and has sharing and discussing features.
Action Method - almost the same features as Basecamp but has a free version for personal use. (I use this, too)
Yahoo! Calendar - It’s free, fast and easy to use
Jott - this is kinda different than the ones above, it’s basically a reminder but goes much farther! I will have a post about this later on.

I have tried using online reminders and calendars but that just didn’t do the magic for me. Even though they help me to remind myself on the tasks I have to get done, they really don’t make me finish them. What I started using is just a simple whiteboard in my room, mounted on the wall next to my bed so I can see it every morning. It usually gets updated every night before I go to sleep. I find this method much more effective than high-tech ones, it’s surprising for me that online tools, while they help, don’t seem to do the magic! I do almost everything online; shopping, studying, etc. But in this matter it’s different.

Make sure you have the goal in mind that by the end of each week you have check marked all your To-Do list items. It will give you energy to actually see what you accomplished!

One important thing about To-Do list is to put what you really need to get done. Adding tasks that you don’t have to get done on your list just makes it harder to do the things you really need to get done, and sometimes long and overwhelming To-Do lists get tossed away!

Lie about due dates…to yourself. For example if you need to get something done by Friday and you think it might be a busy day or the task is gonna take a while to finish give yourself enough time and put an earlier due date on it.

Chop your large tasks. If you have a big project, make sure you work on it in chunks, project management tools such as actionmethod.com or basecamp are ideal for this matter. Create a new project and make smaller assignments out of it.

Just do it!! Don’t sit there and say I know I can’t. Start doing it no matter how hard it looks. Doing something is always better than doing nothing, even if it’s not perfect.

Finally, reward yourself! If you put off your favorite TV show to do your tasks, make sure you reward yourself with something better, call your friends and go out to get away a little bit so you have more energy to get back.

“Waiting is a trap. There will always be reasons to wait. The truth is, there are only two things in life, reasons and results, and reasons simply don’t count.”  - Dr. Robert Anthony