7 Easy Ways to Stop Procrastinating -

Time management is a massive issue for entrepreneurs. Knowing when to work, how to schedule your day and learning why a project is being delayed is essential for your growth.

Procrastination can be a real challenge for business owners who frequently find themselves avoiding “doing” the work. Firstly what does procrastination mean? In simple terms it is the act of delaying or postponing a task or set of tasks.

Often there are 3 reasons why this may happen:

It is a task outside of your zone of genius:, you inherently do not want to do it nor do you enjoy it. In fact it’s your zone of incompetence. Now in some cases we have to do it regardless, like our tax return, we can hire an accountant but we still need to gather the information. Sometimes it’s a task you do not need to do, it can be outsourced, delegated or ditched.
You have been unrealistic with the actions specific goals need. I see this all the time; entrepreneurs will set themselves a goal, a task if you will. But then have no concept on how to make this happen. Every goal must be broken down into tangible chunks for it to be achievable
You are forcing yourself to work at a time of day that does not suit you. You are no longer employed, you get to choose when it is you wish to work.

So how is it you can stop procrastinating and instead move forwards with your business? Read on for 7 ways to stop procrastinating this year. Or if you prefer you can click below to watch my YouTube video. ⬇️

1. Work in your zone of genius

One of the big differences between running a business and being employed is you get to decide what you do. When you start of course you will be doing everything to grow and scale. But there comes a time when you get to choose where is it you want to spend your time? Staying in your zone of genius allows you to scale. In essence there are 4 main zones:

Zone of genius
Zone of excellence
Zone of competence
Zone of incompetence

Gay Hendricks identified four different zones of function in his book, The Big Leap.

So how can you work out where your talents lay?

Ask yourself…

What aspects of my life and job do I love doing? To begin with this might be hard but keep digging deeper. What tasks do I avoid or detest doing? Start allocating them to a zone.

2. Choose your own schedule

When are you most productive? Is this morning or night? Not everyone is productive during 9-5 hours. And when running your own business you don’t need to abide by those rules. Stop trying to fit into this mould – instead get up earlier and work from 7am if this suits you.

Remember it’s YOUR business, you CHOOSE the rules including when to work

Running your own business is so very different to being employed, and for those transitioning from the corporate world to self employed the simple task of knowing when to work is a challenge in itself.

Morning person? Great, get up early and finish early afternoon. Prefer sleeping in and working into the night? No problem, switch your schedule accordingly. It doesn’t matter WHEN you decide to work. But it is important to create a working schedule that is right for you.

3. Audit Your TIME

Often we are not aware where we are spending our time, much of our procrastinating is subconsciously done. So I invite you to track your time over the next week and mark on this table how you are spending your day.

Once you’ve filled this in, look particularly at the amount of time you are spending on the following:

Browsing social media
Serving clients
Sales
Creating content

If you’re spending more time browsing than you are in the other three areas, I invite you to switch that time.

4. Recognise perfectionism doesn’t existe

Because IMPERFECT is real, it exists, PERFECTIONISM however is a myth. Because whose definition of “perfect” are you trying to meet?

Stephen Hawkings said: “One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn’t exist. Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.

What are you putting off because it’s not perfect?

Do you tell yourself I’ll do it tomorrow because I can’t dedicate time today?

How often does tomorrow come and your task is postponed yet again?

Guess what? The timing is never right. When we wait to start something, we may wait forever.

You’ll be astonished how many tasks you complete when you take away the pressure of being perfect. Moving forward instead of correcting your work endlessly means more projects will go live, meaning more chances of you making money.

⬇️ PIN IT FOR LATER ⬇️

5. Understanding your subconscious mind

Your subconscious mind (AKA unconscious mind) is constantly working in the background. It contains everything we have experienced and keeps us “comfortable” following the same path. The minute you want to try something new your subconscious mind will make you feel “uncomfortable” and at times fearful. So what do we do? We avoid doing that something new and stick to the familiar instead. Next time you experience fear and procrastinate ask your self what is holding you back? Recognise the mistruths and flip them to a positive instead. In essence you are retraining your brain that it is ok to try new things even if it makes you uncomfortable.

6. Embracing habits for success

Habits are triggered in our subconscious, so if you want to develop habits that help enable success focus on habits that help eliminate those small decisions each day. Having a plan of what you will do and when.

Good habits are hard to form but easy to live with. Bad Habits are easy to form but hard to live with. All habits are learned and can be unlearned, in other words replace bad habits with a good habit.

What bad habits do you need to release this year? And what good habits do you want to implement?

7. Concise goal setting with a strategy to match

Take your business goals and create smart marketing objectives to help you to meet them. Eg Grow my email list to 5,000 by December 2023. Increase traffic to my website by 50% by 31 August 2023.

What activities do you need to put in place to achieve those marketing goals? Eg Campaigns, launches, funnels, SEO, content plan, social media plan, , PR,.

Next step is writing those goals down and I encourage you to look at all 3 areas as listed below. Think about when in the year these goals will be implemented, it can be easy to set beautiful goals but not actually think about when in the year they will be actioned.