Digital Skraps

Public Enemy #1: PROCRASTINATION!!!

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

That’s right. I’m talking about it. I know none of you want to hear it but somebody needs to tell you the grim reality.

Nothing hurts you more than procrastination!

So I’m going to lead by example and try and help my fellow procrastinators out. I have had the landing page for this site up for way to long. Between switching jobs, trying to get my own business up and running, work on art, personal projects, single life, and toying with the idea of going to school/dealing with loans. What went up as a coming soon page that was supposed to last about 2 weeks. its now been months. I had managed to grab myself some decent traffic for the site under the design previous to this one. Nothing to write home about but had it been managed well would have started to turn into some probably steady traffic. Thanks to the long stay the coming soon page had most of that traffic is gone.

There are countless articles out there in the blogesphere about how its many times more important to get something, anything out there instead of waiting and waiting to get 1 perfect thing out there. So today my site goes live. Not ready, incomplete, lacking information, bugs, etc. It is however something.

So. here are 3 steps you should take to help yourself avoid procrastination.

1. Clean up that work space yo!!!!

It’s strange how the clutter of a desk duplicates it self in the cluttering of your head. I have found countless benefits to having a tidy and sometimes, even borderline baron desk. It forces you to focus on whatever the task at hand is. You’re able to channel all your concentration and effort on that one thing. Soon resulting into a finished product then allowing you to go veg out or do whatever it was you were doing when you procrastinate.

2. Prioritize

Sorting out the junk from the money can be very beneficial. The money being anything that reaps a reward and the junk being time killers. I’m pretty freaking addicted to Call Of Duty 4 on xbox but I have managed to play it less and less to force myself into doing more important things even if its just painting or doing another time killer. I have found mixing up your time killers can be productive too as it forces you to find more outlets. However, the money is obviously where it’s at.

maybe you need to tidy up or make your resume up to date, you never know when you might need to send it to somebody. evaluate whats important and try and takle 1 or 2 of these money tasks and then go chill with some junk.

3. The To Do List.

I don’t care if its Backpack, iCal, Google Cal, Moleskine or freaking trapper keeper. Putting down a daily, but preferable monthly, to do list is in my opinion the best thing you can do to to ensure productivity. Especially monthly. The advantage here is that you get to map out far in advance what needs to be done by when. Things don’t sneak up on you for your projects near as much and giving yourself a visual time frame for when it has to be done is priceless. I have my iCal synced up with goggleCal so I can access it from work if I need to and at home my iCal is always running. Setting even modest goals for yourself can quickly prove to be priceless. The smallest amount of goal driven productivity is rewarding and contagious.

Maybe you need to mark Monday night down to clean the clutter off your workspace. Takes care of all 3 of these steps in one fail swoop.

Doesn’t matter how big or small, putting something down is better than nothing just like getting something out there can be better than getting one perfect thing out.