Now that you know all the components of procrastination, you’ve had a chance to determine which ones might apply to you, and you’ve learned the skills you need to get rid of or diminish them in your life.
Let’s put it all together so that you have a coherent assessment of yourself to bring to your tasks, your projects, and your life going forward.
You will finally be able to get stuff done and start achieving your goals, and these may be business, career or personal development goals.
Whatever the goals you are aiming for, getting laser focused and having a plan is really going to help you to beat procrastination and get you to your end result.
Follow the 8-step plan below to help you beat procrastination once and for all.
Using your computer or a paper and pen, answer the following questions in as much detail as possible:
1 – Identify the areas in your life where you procrastinate. It could be with tasks or projects or relationships. It could be in your home, on your job, in public situations, or with friends and relatives. Where do you want to make changes? What are you dissatisfied with?
How do you see it changing? What is your vision for the future? Write this in as much detail as possible.
2 – Remember, you achieve change through a combination of dissatisfaction with the present plus a vision for the future plus a plan plus taking the first steps.
Now, give yourself a challenge. Write down each change you want to make in phrases starting with,” I will…….…”
Look at each thing you want to change and ask yourself:
3 – Next, turn your challenges into goals. Decide when you want to achieve the goal, and write this down for each goal,” It is(the date) and I have achieved this goal. Make these goals real in whatever way you want: for instance, a vision board, a journal, or by telling your friends about them.
4 – You need a way to measure your success. How will you know if you’ve reached your target goal? What will success means you? Write it down.” My success criteria are…….” Do that for each goal.
5 – Write down each goal, leaving some space beneath each one. Think through all of the negative things associated with that goal. What will the obstacles be? What can you do in advance to diminish the obstacles? For each goal, finish this statement,” I am removing the barriers to success with this goal by………”
6 – Now it’s time to break your project into steps. We know by now that this will make it much more manageable and give us reason not to be overwhelmed or afraid. Develop two or three first steps for achieving your goal and write them down.
7 – Now take a look at your first steps. What are the positives? What are the negatives? Choose the first steps for each goal that you determine to be the best ones.
8 – Next, plan the rest of your project step by step, going back and assessing each step as you did in number seven. Remember to build in flexibility in time constraints to allow for unforeseen events and obstacles. Remember also that it’s completely acceptable to amend these steps as you go along.
A few more pointers to remember when you’re actually working in your project:
Well done! Celebrate you!
I hope that you have enjoyed this 4 part series discussing the problem of procrastination and that you have some useful actionable tips that you can use to blast through any areas in your life that are being affected by procrastination.
And remember, one way to beat procrastination is to stay focused and many people struggle with this. If you want to learn more about staying focused, check out the featured resource below for a free detailed report; download, read it and take action 😊
If you want to increase your sales and expand your outreach, you need to position yourself as an authority in your market.
An authority can:
The first step in your journey to positioning yourself as an authority in your niche is to ask yourself two important questions:
Seems like two rather easy questions, right?
Because ultimately, all people are about is “what is in it for them?”
They need to know how you plan to help them, what you bring to the table and how you will solve their problems.
Authority marketing is about positioning your business in a way that you become the logical choice when someone is making the decision who to turn to for help, advice, products or services.
Your goal is to become the go-to person in your niche, or at the very least, one of the first names that come to mind when someone thinks about who to turn to for help with specific topics.
Note that I didn’t say “specific markets or niches”, I said topic.
That’s because it’s always best to position yourself so that people identify you as an authority on a very specific topic or category rather than the market as a whole.
For example, rather than trying to establish yourself as the authority of all things related to blogging, positioning yourself as someone who is known for teaching people how to drive traffic to blogs, allows you to connect to a specific audience.
This will make your marketing campaigns far more effective and targeted than when casting a wider net.
Trust me, it’ll cut down on a lot of research, trial and error and testing as well because you’ll be able to spend the majority of your time researching that one specific segment of a market and learning everything you need to know about it.
So, begin by taking some time to decide what area of your niche you’ll venture into. Then you’ll be able to study that segment of the market thoroughly, create a plan of action and execute quickly.
Sounds obvious, right?
You need to know WHO you your audience really is and HOW you can help them.
In fact, knowing your audience is one of the most important things you can do when trying to establish yourself as an authority in your market.
This goes beyond just creating a quick overview of your average customer. Instead, spend time on the same websites, in the same circles and on the same platforms that they do.
Always put yourself in your customers’ shoes. They don’t care about your personal goals – they care only about themselves and their needs – and above all else, how you will help them solve a problem.
Read that again: you’re the only one who truly cares about your business growth. Everyone else just cares about how your business can personally help them.
This means that your focus should always be on identifying key areas in your market where people are struggling.
Then you can use that information in many different areas of your business, such as: coming up with customized products and services that fill that need, developing a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) that offers a promise to solve that problem and creating marketing campaigns that trigger your audience into taking action.
Thorough market research is the key to success when it comes to gaining the advantage of becoming an authority.
Those who overlook the importance of truly understanding their audience even before they create a business plan or launch a marketing campaign will quickly discover just how difficult it is to gain traction.
In fact, without knowing your audience, you’re venturing into a market blindfolded with little chance of success.
On the flip side, putting time and effort into researching your market and connecting with your core audience early on, will make all the difference in your ability to create in-demand products and services that are a no-brainer for your customer base.
You’ll be able to stand out from the crowd, position yourself as an expert and easily convince people to give your brand and business a chance.
And your marketing campaigns will be far more successful and ultimately, cost you less in terms of time spent tweaking and split-testing campaigns. Because you’ll know what makes people tick.
Are your ads mainly geared towards highlighting features rather than the benefits?
Are your campaigns structured in a way that personally connects with your core audience and goes to work at solidifying your brand?
Do they help position you as an expert?
When it comes to the psychology behind successful brand building and authority positioning, it often hinges on your ability to demonstrate empathy.
The more you do this, the easier it will be to resonate with your audience and connect with your customer base. You’ll come off as more personable, approachable and as someone who truly has their best interests at heart.
There are 3 basic types of empathy: cognitive, emotional, and compassionate.
Cognitive empathy is also known as perspective-taking. It’s the ability to think the way someone else thinks, to imagine you’re them and see how they’d react to something.
It’s a useful skill, especially in marketing, but not exactly what you imagine true empathy should be. Empathy should have an emotional component if it’s going to go the distance.
Emotional empathy is when you inject emotional triggers into your campaigns, ads, sales copy and general content.
How do your customers feel when they look at your ads or read your content? What emotions do you stimulate with your communications, campaigns, emails?
Emotional empathy allows you to feel what others do, like when you hear someone laughing and you smile without knowing exactly what they’re laughing at.
It’s contagious. And when you learn to inject this kind of emotion into your overall brand, your ability to connect with your audience will become one of your super powers. J
Finally, compassionate empathy is the ability to identify someone’s emotion and act on that with a solution.
In this way, you’ll create something that not only takes their feelings into account, but gives them a logical solution to that emotion.
Example: Someone is stressed out because they’re unable to pay their monthly bills. You understand their concerns, what keeps them up at night and act on that with a solution: a business opportunity that will help them gain financial freedom and eliminate stress.
Stress is the emotion you identify and your business positions itself in such a way as to become the solution to eliminating or addressing that emotion.
And it doesn’t have to be a negative emotion either. Someone could feel elated that they have discovered that blogging is a great way to connect with people and help them but they need to know how to create that blog, launch that blog and grow that blog.
All of this comes down to knowing your market so you can position yourself as the expert and authority they are looking for.
They’ll feel they need you, that you’re the solution to their problems and that you truly understand how they are feeling and what they need most.
That is how you’ll stand out in your market 🙂
If you want to know more about leveraging the power of authority marketing, then check out the featured resource below for a free report that expands on this post; download, read and take action 🙂
Now is the time to build on your strengths, improve on your weaknesses, and develop your skills.
Procrastination always has two elements: the task you’re putting off and the internal forces that are causing you to do so. The more you deal with your inner “demons,” the easier it will be to take action.
When you start to get things done, you experience these feelings less and less.
In our projects as in life, we come up against obstacles. We need to handle those obstacles in order to see the task through to the end. Self-esteem helps us to do that because it helps us develop resilience and the belief that we can succeed despite barriers. Self-esteem can grow or it can diminish, and we can control that.
So, what is self-esteem? The most important component of self-esteem is internal. It’s the ability to like and accept yourself with all your strengths and weaknesses, and in spite of the mistakes you make.
It’s understanding that you are equal to anyone else and you, like anyone else, are unique and one-of-a-kind. It’s not ego driven. It’s not a belief that you’re superior to anyone. It’s the understanding that each one of us is unique, special, and important.
Another component of self-esteem comes from the reflection of ourselves that we get from other people. We get either positive or negative feedback from people in obvious or subtle ways all the time.
We get from the media, from work, and from our relationships. Unfortunately, we can’t always depend on outside sources to have our best interests at heart or even to be honest.
So, although it’s inevitable that some of our self-concept comes from outside sources, a much better, more fulfilling approach to our lives is to develop our internal self-esteem and diminish the effects of external self-esteem.
Here are the questions to ask yourself:
The answers to these questions should give you an awareness of yourself that will strengthen your internal self-esteem and lessen your need for approval of others.
Next, here are some powerful actions that you can take to strengthen your self-esteem and diminish your tendency to procrastinate:
Here’s one non-negotiable law for living the life you dream of: self-esteem is essential to our well-being. It’s not selfishness; it’s just the opposite.
It’s possible that you are not even aware of the negative inner voices that keep harping at you. Science has shown, though, that the vast majority of our thoughts are negative, and a lot of those thoughts are about ourselves.
It’s natural that this is true because these thoughts are an accumulation of judgments we received in childhood, then from our peers, and eventually from ourselves. These thoughts are even more frequent when we’re feeling vulnerable or facing obstacles.
How many times have you said things like if yourself:
The next step is easy and even fun. Start talking back to those thoughts.
Say things like:
” It’s okay to make mistakes.”
” I’m not stupid, this is just something new for me.”
” This is not too hard – I just have to take it one step at a time.”
” Everything does not depend on this. If this doesn’t work out, I’ll find another way.”
See, wasn’t it fun? Won’t you feel a lot better doing that than giving in to negative thinking?
The next step is to reinforce your self-esteem with some positive thoughts about yourself. Remember the list you made of the things you’re good at and your positive qualities?
Repeat a few of those things to yourself after you’ve had some negative self-talk. Then give yourself a small reward (talking to a friend, reading a book for a little while, taking a time out for yourself, etc.). These positive thoughts and actions reinforce your positive feeling about yourself.
Our negative self-talk tries to protect us from taking risks and things we fear, but it also puts up barriers to opportunities and challenges and changes that would enhance our lives.
And think about this: research has shown that four out of five of our fears never materialize. The fears that do materialize, we can handle, especially after we build our strengths.
Here are some strategies for managing your fears:
Handling fear is not easy for any of us. But facing it leads to a more fulfilling, productive life.
Of course, it’s obvious that we have to have some degree of motivation in order to overcome procrastination. And it’s also obvious that we need some willpower in order to want things to change so that we do follow through on our projects.
A better idea would be to choose projects and tasks for now that can help you build your motivation and willpower in general.
Try these exercises to increase your willpower:
These are all small steps, as you can see. You can and should substitute as many small steps as you can think of. The point is that you’re building your willpower. This in turn builds your self-confidence: you begin to realize that you can depend on yourself to follow through.
What is assertiveness? And why are some people so much better at being assertive than others? How can we be appropriately assertive without being aggressive and overbearing?
Acting assertively can be complicated because how we behave stems from a combination of our beliefs and values, our attitudes, our thoughts and feelings, and our self-esteem. It comes down to choosing the way we will behave in order to get what we want.
Many of us use more than one of these techniques, and while we probably know that the first choice is the best choice, many more of us don’t know how to go about being assertive.
Being assertive means acknowledging our needs and asking in an open and direct manner for those needs to be fulfilled. It implies respect for the people we’re asking, respect for ourselves, and respect for the task at hand. If our needs in this particular situation are not met, it is not a blow to our self-esteem because our self-esteem is not based on the approval of others.
Assertiveness is not always the easiest behavior choice, but it is the one most likely to get what we want. It is the win-win approach.
Being aggressive is often a compulsive overreaction; it’s competitive and leads to win-lose situation.
Being passive is negative behavior with negative results. It creates victims who allow other people to decide their fate. But the truth is that those people are victims of their own passivity.
The indirectly aggressive or manipulative approach also rises from low self-esteem. For these people it’s safer to control and manipulate rather than face confrontation and the possibility of being rejected.
There are some techniques you can use to maintain an assertive attitude without becoming aggressive or passive. Try some of these to keep you on track. You don’t need to use all of them; use the ones that work for you in a given situation.
Remember that being assertive is often about negotiation and compromise. It’s about not being aggressive or passive or manipulative. It’s about the win-win for everyone involved.
Few things encourage procrastination better than anger and frustration, yet anger and frustration are inevitable in life and in projects.
The first thing you must do is recognize when you’re frustrated or angry. Many of us are so proficient at hiding these feelings from other people that we’ve become great at hiding them from ourselves. That is usually a problem because the anger and frustration show themselves in other ways.
One of these ways is to discontinue whatever we’ve started. Another outcome is that we show our anger toward other things or people that are unrelated to the real cause. All of this is unproductive.
You could channel that frustration into finding other solutions for the problem. Or you could find other projects to work on temporarily. Next, find a productive way to release your anger and frustration. It might be through exercise or even household chores.
Pay attention to what causes you anger and frustration. Try to make sure that you’re separating your current anger from past situations that cause anger. One thing that many of us do is bring old anger that has been dealt with to new situations.
Find means to deal with anger and frustration as they appear. A good idea is to come up with solutions in advance. Since we know for certain that the feelings will come up again, channeling them in a positive way will produce the best outcome.
Another enemy of productivity, closely related to frustration and anger, is stress. Stress is our body’s way of letting us know that we are confronting something beyond our coping ability.
On a physical level, much less an emotional level, our instinct is to flee. This is the point where many of us give up on our projects. Again, a lot of us have a tendency to ignore stress until it causes major problems physically, emotionally, and even in all areas of our lives.
The symptoms of stress can vary from person to person, but we all need to know what they are so that we can deal with them if and when they arise.
Physical symptoms – heart palpitations, nausea, muscle cramps, colds, infections, fatigue, body aches, and indigestion.
Emotional symptoms – mood swings, irritability, tension, anxiety, and powerlessness
Behavioral symptoms – accidents, inferior job performance, overeating or not eating, lack of concentration, general exhaustion.
Mental symptoms – indecision, memory failure, worrying, loss of perspective, lack of empathy
Get to know your particular signs of stress and recognize when you’re experiencing …the sooner you do, the better for your health.
Knowing the factors that cause stress will help you anticipate when you might be experiencing them. We have different levels of stress tolerance, and many times different types of stressors can combine to cause serious stress.
The four types of stressors are:
Situational stressors – these include unexpected situations, change, bad news, heavy workloads, and negative environmental factors
Life events stressors – these include marriage, divorce, death, birth of a child, moving, ill health, and financial concerns
Stressors caused by others – these include unreasonable demands by others, unreasonable expectations from others, and a negative atmosphere at work or at home
Internal stressors – these include perfectionism, unreasonable expectations from ourselves, feelings of inadequacy, unmet needs for acceptance and love, and the need to control.
Stress can be debilitating and lead to many physical problems if you don’t deal with it. The way to handle stress is to recognize it, interrupt the pattern, and use the tools available to reduce it.
In order to recognize stress in your life, ask yourself these questions:
Once you recognize that you’re feeling stress, come to terms with those feelings. Don’t run away from your feelings but accept them as signs that are showing you the need to take action.
Develop a support network. Let your friends know when you need them, and make sure they know that you’re grateful for their help.
Take a good look at your lifestyle. What changes do you need to make? Make the time for some exercise and some relaxation. Eat a healthy diet, don’t smoke, and drink moderately. Think positively and handle your negative inner thoughts.
All of these things that you build into your lifestyle will strengthen you again stress.
The serenity prayer is an awesome piece of wisdom and wonderful for dealing with stress. It says,“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” – Old Irish Saying
The feeling of overwhelm is a major cause of procrastination. It is so uncomfortable it can cause us to put off doing projects or flee from them faster than just about anything else will. The good news is that prioritizing, organizing, and planning – tools that can easily diminish this feeling – are not that difficult to learn.
I know that you know that old expression:” How do you eat an elephant?” “One bite at a time.” We all know that breaking things down into parts make sense. It makes difficult things easy by putting them in logical order so that we can address each step and go on to the next one. For some of us, it’s difficult to do.
Here are the steps:
Once you begin your project, you may discover efficiencies that will help with your time management. For instance, are the right people performing the right tasks? Could you improve performance by switching people’s functions?
These are just examples of efficiencies that you may find what you’re going through the project. The point is to monitor your progress to reduce unexpected, unwanted surprises, and to keep you on track.
Prioritize your tasks on a daily basis because the priority can change quickly.
Priority one – important and urgent, tasks to do immediately.
Priority two – important but not urgent, tasks that can’t be planned for a future time.
Priority three – urgent but not important, tasks that can be delegated.
Priority four – routine, tasks that need to be done but can be deferred or delegated.
So, in the final article in this series, we’ll look at how to put this all together.
One way to beat procrastination is to stay focused and many people struggle with this. If you want to learn more about staying focused, check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 😊
In today’s article, I’ll share a few resources and tools that will make it easy to manage a team of freelancers.
By the way, this is a continuation of another article about the Power Of Outsourcing which can be found here.
Cloud-Based Systems
You may decide that it makes sense to use a cloud-based content management system to manage your freelancers.
Asana is an awesome tool for project management as well as managing your team based on tasks and deadlines.
You can find that here: https://www.Asana.com
The benefit of cloud-based systems is that you and your freelancing team can access them from anywhere.
One of the reasons I like Asana is that they offer a free app for users, too.
You can use cloud-based systems to:
In addition to Asana, I like Joomla and Monday.
Of course, you can also use something like Google Docs or OneDrive to share files, but they’re not complete content management systems.
OK, now let’s talk about accountability and why it’s so important when managing a team of freelancers. In a healthy working relationship, everyone must be accountable for their work.
Let’s talk about how that can work.
If you’ve got a short-term project, you may simply decide to give the freelancer a delivery date.
In writing, that might mean that you’d say:
I’ve added two new blog posts to the CMS. Those are due on April 21st by 5:00 Eastern Time.
Of course, you can include the due dates in your CMS as well.
For long-term projects, you should break down deliverables into milestones.
For example, if you hire a freelancer to redesign your website, you might have the following deliverables:
Each milestone should include a due date and a payment.
This method allows you maximum control over deliverables while making it clear what the freelancer’s duties are.
Your expectations should be spelled out in the contract and reinforced in every interaction you have with your team.
That doesn’t mean you’ll need to mention accountability and consequences every time you speak. It simply means that your actions should always be clear and consistent.
If you communicate well, provide freelancers with the tools they need to excel, and hold yourself and your team accountable, you’ll be able to get the best possible work from the freelancers you hire.
OK, now let’s recap what you need to pay close attention to in order to build a successful team that will take your business to the next level.
OK, to recap, the things you need to do to build a successful team of freelancers include all of the following:
Regardless of how hard we may try to convince ourselves not to outsource, the bottom line is that delegating important tasks to qualified professionals is simply the fastest way to grow your business and skyrocket your income.
There’s another reason why outsourcing is important: when you try to do it all, you’re taking 2 big risks.
The second risk, and it’s a big one, is that you’ll simply burn out and not be able to stay on top of your market.
No matter how many skills are in your arsenal, or how many years of experience you have, there are always tasks that can (and should) be done by seasoned professionals. As the old saying goes, just because you can do it yourself doesn’t mean you should.
Well, there is a lot more to be learnt about outsourcing for efficiency; far more than can be covered in this short post, but if you’d like to know more about this, then click on the featured resource below where you can pick up a free report that covers this topic in more detail. Download it, read it and take action 😊
So, who are you, anyway? First, let me tell you the end right now at the beginning.
When we come to the end of this article and you have learned a few things about yourself that you didn’t know, you’re very likely going to approve of the person you find.
Second, some of the exercises might ask you questions you haven’t thought about before but do your best to answer them because they will give you insight into your preferences.
An important part of overcoming procrastination is getting to a point where you want to do the things you need to do because you like them. The more you know yourself, the better you’ll be at framing your tasks in terms of your preferences.
This exercise should give you an idea about how you perform on projects currently. Think about a project you have successfully completed — at work, at home, or in a social situation. Answer the following questions:
This exercise will tell you something about your attitude toward goal setting. Which of the following statements apply to you?
Let’s talk about willpower and motivation next. To some extent, they go hand-in-hand because the more willpower you have, the less easily you give in to distractions and the more motivated you are to begin a task and to complete it.
Which of the following statements fit your personality?
It’s easy to put things off for all kinds of valid reasons. But if you’re procrastinating for other reasons, you need to identify those reasons. Do you really want to take on this project?
Try to understand why you are unable to start – or finish – certain tasks.
Fear of failure can stop you dead in your tracks even though everyone fails sometimes. It can interfere with your time management, your productivity, and even your relationships.
Answer often, sometimes, or never to the following questions:
The more times you answered often or sometimes, the more effectively you cope with failure. Feeling rejected or threatened when something doesn’t turn out as you had hoped is somewhat natural, but passion and anger can be destructive if they’re not managed.
Sometimes, we procrastinate because we believe we don’t have time, but the truth is that we don’t know how to manage our time or how to prioritize.
Use the following questions to assess your time-management skills:
No worries, these skills are ones you can learn.
In this exercise we’re going to think about what we do well. Make a list of all the things you are good at.
The key here is for the person you are asking is completely honest about your strengths and isn’t just telling you what you want to hear.
How assertive you are and how you interact with others can directly affect how much you procrastinate, and also how well you initiate and negotiate tasks.
Your answers to the following questions will let you know how assertive you are in four areas: at work, at home, in public, and with friends.
Now, let’s think about how you react in these situations.
Awareness about your skills and personality traits is the first step toward strength. You can’t change what you’re not aware of. So, take a look at all your responses and ask yourself what they tell you.
So, in the next article in this series, we’ll look at how to build on your strengths, improve on your weaknesses, and develop your skills.
One way to beat procrastination is to stay focused and many people struggle with this. If you want to learn more about staying focused, check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 😊
