Avoiding Procrastination - Part 1: Introduction

On the back of the jacket of Jack Canfield’s book, The Success Principles, this quotation caught our attention:  “The principles always work if you work the principles”. 

Perhaps this is too simplistic a statement or merely echoes another familiar marketing “come-on”, but it does translate into a variation of the work ethic.  To us, this means doing instead of just thinking. 

And doing is synonymous to action, execution, implementation, carrying out – all these convey the active mode as opposed to the passive mode of just thinking. 

The human brain knows no limits when it comes to thinking out ways and strategies in dealing with all kinds of problems, but if these strategies and plans are NOT acted upon, they really hold no meaning – they’re like empty blueprints camouflaged in sparkling rhetoric.  And rhetoric comes cheap these days.

We’ve made up our minds to be less ambitious about this work, and called the 101 recommendations and suggestions contained in this book as simply TIPS.  Tips on how NOT to procrastinate. 

Procrastination pervades every aspect of our lives.  And we’ve mastered it to perfection having learned a subtle form of it when we were babies. 

We delayed falling asleep because our mothers wouldn’t cradle us in her arms.  We’ve procrastinated in performing our duties at home, in school, in the work place, and in our most fragile human relationships.  We shudder to think what the final tally of lost hours will be because we procrastinated habitually.

Some of the tips we share here may be useful and some may be irrelevant.  Others will come in handy not necessarily today, but at a later stage of our lives. 

Procrastination is an expensive habit.  We discovered that one of the ways that will not make us procrastinate is to figure out the dollar amount of something that was not done because of procrastination. 

It all points to the generally accepted idea that time is money. This alone can serve as a strong motivator not to procrastinate again.  Or at least to try not procrastinate!

Jack Canfield quoted Brian Tracy to drive home the message:  “Life is like a combination lock; your job is to find the right numbers, in the right order, so you can have anything you want”.

We’d be lying if we told you that if you followed our 101 tips on how not to procrastinate, you can have anything you want.  It doesn’t work that way. 

These tips are ideas that have come from our heads and from other people’s heads.  And it’s up to you to apply them in every segment of your daily routine.  Avoiding procrastination is more effective when we start with little steps.  It does not mean having to change our lives drastically. 

But as one writer said, not procrastinating will make us appreciate the life we have now.  And as we build on the small steps, we’d be amazed at how much we can accomplish over the years.

In deciding not to procrastinate, you may want to accompany this determination with clear cut and well defined goals. 

In other words, have a goal that is quantified, and not just qualified. 

For example, saying “I will lose weight” is NOT as powerful as “I will lose 35 pounds in 1-1/2 years.”  These are concrete data you can work with.  “I will lose weight” sounds noble enough, but let’s count the ways, shall we?

Continue to: Part 2: Self-Evaluation