Time is Money! An hour wasted is an hour that you can’t get back. Most productive people understand that there are only so many hours in the day and if we want to get more done we have to learn to juggle our seemingly infinite amount of goals, obligations, and relationships with the finite amount of time we have to do them in.

This need to use our time wisely has given way to a whole new industry of time management as people ask the questions, “what if I had more free time” and “how can I get more done”? We try to schedule time to work on our goals, our errands, and to just relax.

The question we are afraid to ask ourselves is, how productive are we really being when we are working on our projects. It is easy to trick ourselves into thinking that we have done a lot of work and have accomplished a lot in the day when we really haven’t.

Some examples of this occur;

• When We Are Doing Things Other People Want Us To Do

We convince ourselves that we are being productive when we do things that other people want us to do simply because we are actually getting things done. The problem is, we know deep down that it isn’t what we really want to be doing and we may end up ditching it once we work up the courage to do so.

In this situation all the time we spend educating ourselves, building relationships, and working on a goal that someone else wanted us to have is time we have wasted. We may accomplish something when we work on goals other people have for us, but we don’t accomplish the things we want to accomplish and therefore it isn’t the most productive use of our time.

• When We Do Things Without Big Rewards

Sometimes when we want to stay busy we will focus on doing busy work. This can include things like rearranging the furniture, gardening, or spending our time researching small purchase Items. It is easy to convince ourselves that we are getting things done here, and we are.

The problem is that we aren’t using our time wisely. Just because we are staying busy and we keep moving doesn’t mean we are heading in the right direction. It is entirely possibly that we are running on a treadmill that isn’t going anywhere. Staying busy is good, but staying busy and actually getting the most you can from your time are two different things.

• When All Your Time Is Spent Learning And Very Little Is Spent Doing

Learning is a good thing. You can’t go anywhere without educating yourself. That is why there is so much money spent on colleges and educational programs. But learning without action is pointless.

This world is filled with people who have spent their entire lives learning different strategies to invest their money, yet have never tried any of them. Learning is valuable, but only if you follow through with what you have learned. At some point you will need to put your book down and start taking a chance, otherwise nothing will ever be accomplished.

How To Tell If We Are Really Getting Stuff Done

If it is so easy to convince ourselves that we are getting things done when we really aren’t how can we decide if we really are accomplishing something?

The first thing we can look at is if we are advancing our goals. If your goal is to create a fantastic garden in your house, than spending your time outside with a weed wacker can be a good use of your time. But if your goal is to start your own construction business than gardening in your back yard may be a waste of time and you may even want to outsource it to somebody else.

Another thing you can ask yourself is what will happen in 30 days if you keep doing what you are doing. If you are a sells person and you spent your day reading books about selling more will you learn something? Yes you will. Will it help you? Probably.

But if all you do is read books about selling products and you do that every day for 30 days will you be any better off than you are today? You might know some tricks, other than that you will pretty much be in the same situation you are in now.

On the other hand if you spent your day making 20 cold calls than you have actually accomplished something. If you do that for 30 days straight, than you will have talked to 600 people.

You’ve probably learned a lot more from talking to those people then you could have learned from any sales book and as a side note, you’ve probably made a few sales as well.

Sometimes our biggest time wasters are things that we think are actually helping us. You may have obligations you need to take care of and it is a good idea to educate yourself. But don’t get caught up in the trap of working your life away and accomplishing nothing.

What do you think? Are you using your time wisely? What things do you do that you think are helping you get more free time, but are really causing you to waste your time?

How Complaining Affects Your Reality

The Time Is Now

Don’t Let School Interfere With Your Education

How To Stop Procrastination

14 Simple Steps To Overcoming Laziness

Organization is a critical skill to learn! One of my biggest challenges in life has always been keeping things neat and putting items back in their place. I tend to look at myself as an idea man and as a result sometimes struggle to keep up with the world around me. It is easy to let things pile up and to not work on organizing my house, bedroom, or office.

I keep aiming to improve and to keep forming good habits for myself, like putting things away and making sure I know where everything is suppose to go. If you’ve had a problem like me it is a very good idea to learn how to get organized and to make an effort to improve yourself.

But why? Why is organization such a big deal? I’ve thought about it, and here are 8 reasons why we can all benefit by maintaining a more organized lifestyle.

1. Keep Ideas

As I stated earlier I have always considered myself to be an idea man. I come up with new ideas all the time and either act on them, throw them away, or use them to generate new ideas. The problem I’ve ran into when I was disorganized is that I was having trouble keeping my ideas around.

Sure, I can write down any idea I have so I can look at it later. But if I don’t organize my papers and notebooks so that I can easily find it when I want to it isn’t going to help me very much. I might as well have never written it down in the first place and simply let the ideas fade out of my memory.

The solution to this problem is to be a little more organized. Write down any ideas you have in notebook that is specifically dedicated for those ideas and keep that notebook in a safe place. It should be set aside at a place you will remember to check whenever you want to go back and look at your old ideas.

Doing this saves you time and makes things easier on yourself.

2. Get More From Your Thoughts

In the past I’ve talked about something called compound knowledge. It is an idea where each time you learn something new about a given subject you are growing at a faster and faster rate.

For instance if you want to know how a computer works you might start by asking how each button on the computer sends a signal to the screen to do a specific task. Then you might ask more specific questions like how the computer chip itself works.
Finally if you go down the road far enough you might gain the knowledge to create your own computer that is more advance then anything in the market today.

This process of compound knowledge works as you learn more and more about a subject, until you know so much about it that you seem like a genius in your field to others who have not had that same thirst for knowledge.

This also works for ideas. As you have more and more ideas you can build off of those ideas and come up with newer ideas that are so original you would have never thought of them before.

Compounding your knowledge or your ideas can take you to a new high and help you to discover new horizons. But in order to get it to work and to make the most of your time you have to remember what your ideas are.

This is another reason why it is good to keep your ideas organized into different notebooks so you can easily come back to them in the future.

3. Lower Your Stress

How many times have you added extra stress into your life simply by losing that all important document or by misplacing something you need to have to start your day?
The bottom line is; when you are constantly disorganized to the point where it is affecting your life it will undoubtedly cause you to have a lot of unwanted stress and even interfere with the way you live your life today.

If you want to escape from this problem the solution is easy. Start getting organized and building a habit of putting things away in their rightful place.

4. Waste Less Time

The side effect of being less organized is that you tend to lose more items. As you lose them you have to spend your time searching for each item instead of carrying out your day. If you have ever lost your car keys you understand what a pain it can be to put everything else in your life on hold while you search for something you really can’t leave the house without.

While it may not seem like a big time waster to spend 5-10 minutes searching for your car keys if you do it on a regular basis it can add up and mean you are wasting a lot of time doing something you shouldn’t even have to do in the first place.

“The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.” Samuel Johnson

The time it takes you to get and stay organized will be more than made up for by the amount of time that you save by not searching for lost items.

5. Look More Respectable

I’ve never been one to focus too much on what other people think of me. I have my own morals in life and try to live the life I want to live regardless of the life that others may want me to live.

That being said, the people in your life have a huge impact on how successful you will become. We are still social animals, we need to work together to succeed and we need to come together to feel loved and to be appreciated.

Being organized makes you look more respectable to potential employers, business partners, or even spouses.

6. Procrastinate Less

Say you have to review and sign some important documents, but you’re not entirely sure what you did with them. If you want to get them back you have to go down to your bank and request them.

If all you had to do was to pick the paper up from your files, sign it, and email it, it wouldn’t take but a minute. If you also have to drive down to pick the document up, it is a different story. That extra step makes it a little harder to do and therefore makes it a lot easier to procrastinate.

As you put off more things they tend to pile up and make life harder for you in the future, leading to even more stress and more problems down the road.

7. Get More Done

When you are organized it helps you to get more things done. You know where things are and you also know what you need to be doing. You don’t need to waste your time finding your book, a pen, or whatever. You can simply get to work and get it out of the way.

8. Do A Better Job

When you are disorganized and are losing important items and procrastinating it affects your work in general. Instead of making stuff up on your college paper because you lost your notes or using less tax write offs on your taxes because you are in a hurry and disorganized, take some time to get organized. Keep track of your papers and use them to be the best you can be and put your heart and soul into everything that you do.

Ask For What You Want

Why is Time Management Important?

How to Stop Procrastination

Ever wonder how to set priorities, or what setting priorities is even about? Priorities are those things that are most important in your life and you put ahead of other events and responsibilities that you have.

The idea is that you may or may not be able to get everything done, but if you focus on the things that are most important to you then you at least know they will get done.

For example, say you are working on a very important project for work and it has to get done that day. You also want to shop for groceries for the week. Common sense says that you should want to spend your time working on the very important work stuff and put off going grocery shopping until after you are finished with it.

This way if you run out of time or something major happens you know that you got the most important thing done. You could have done this the other way around and did the grocery shopping first. But if you ran into problems then you might end up just getting the least important stuff done and miss the deadline for your project.

Often times we get so focused on doing things that we forget to look at what we are doing and see what is actually important to us. By looking at our tasks and putting more energy into the things that we care about and less energy into things that we don’t we end up making sure that we get the biggest projects done no matter what happens.

Throughout our lives we get hit with big decisions and responsibilities. It is up to us to determine what we need to get done first, what we can put off until later, and what we should just ignore.

You are probably wondering how to set priorities and what to think about. If you are, here are three questions to ask yourself when setting priorities in life or at work.

What Has to Get Done Now?

Some things can wait until later, others can’t. One of the methods you can use to decide what you are going to do first is to simply figure out when you have to get it done by. If you have to get something done tomorrow then obviously it should take priority over something that you have 2 months to get done.

Urgency is an important thing to consider when setting priorities in life, but it is not the only thing.

What is Important To You

As humans we tend to focus on things as they pop up. We want to move towards what is new and fix every issue as they arise. But if you are only reacting to the world around you then you are not creating your world.

If you want to be successful at something in life, whether it be golfing, starting a business, becoming an artist or whatever you cannot just hope that there will be time for you to work for your dreams someday. Instead you have to make time for it today and every other day until you succeed. Think of how much you can get done in life if you do at least 1 thing a day to help you reach your goals.

If you truly know where you want to stand your ground in life and you are dedicated to making your dreams a reality then it will help you to make it a priority to stay active and do things for it on a regular basis regardless of what else is going on in your life.

What Can You Avoid Doing?

We are brought up to believe that avoiding doing something is a bad idea and that effective people get everything done. But sometimes you have to decide when something is just not worth your time.

Even if something is urgent, if it isn’t important to helping you grow or to achieving your goals in life then it is really taking away from time you could have spent doing something else. That is why some things are just better if they are scratched off of your to-do list (if you can) or outsourced to someone else (ex paying the kid next door to mow your front lawn).

Of course not all things can be avoided, but it doesn’t hurt to look for ways around doing the things in life which aren’t that important to you and just distract you.

These are 3 key questions to ask yourself when setting priorities in life as far as I see it. Do you have anything else to add when it comes to how to set priorities?

How the 80 20 Principal Changed My Life

Why is Time Management Important

How to Stop Procrastination

You have probably heard about the 80 20 principle before, if not it isn’t very difficult to understand. Simply put this principal means that 80% of the results in any area of life comes from 20% of the actions.

While the percentage points may not always equal 20% and 80% the basic principle remains the same in nearly every aspect of life.

• The Top 10% of people own 85% of the money
• The Top 20% of sales people make over 80% of sales
• The Top 1.5% of languages are spoken by 90% of the world
• The Top 20% of Workers Produce 80% of the Results
• And so on

It is one of the simple patterns that we see again and again in our world. The 80 20 principle can be used to get people worked up and angry or it can be used to benefit yourself and improve your own life. If used correctly the 80 20 principle can help you live a happier life with less work and more results.

Let me give you an example of how I used it to see extraordinary results.

How The 80 20 principle Changed My Life

The first website I ever created is lost in cyberspace somewhere (if it is even still around). The second website I created with the hopes of writing articles and having people naturally visit my site through the search engines.

After working my butt off for a year and creating 368 pages for the site I was seeing about 150 people visit it each day. I got some traffic coming to my site, but it was hardly enough to justify all of the work I put into it.

It made me feel like a loser seeing as how I spent all this time working on a site that really wasn’t taking off while at the same time I was hearing stories about others who would create a 50 page site and start seeing 1000s of people visiting it every day.

I was trying to create a business, but only succeeded in creating a hobby. It wasn’t hopeless though, with the use of the 80 20 principle everything would change.

Up until now I was really shooting in the dark and hoping I hit something. The good news is after trying different things I finally got lucky. Most of the pages I wrote for my site would be found through the search engines maybe once or twice in a month.

But one page put the rest of the site to shame. Each month between 150-300 people would come to my site through this 1 article I wrote months ago. I still remember a month where only 804 people visited my site from Google and 210 of those came to my site because of this one article.

In other words this one article was sending me 26% of my visitors from Google. Going by that number I would have needed to create about 95 regular pages to see the same results that this one page was giving me.

At the time I already knew about the 80 20 principle and I figured there had to be a reason why this page was producing most of the results. There had to be something the page had that the other pages on my site didn’t.

I knew that if I could only find out why this page had worked and reproduce it, I would be able to actually see the kind of success I wanted. Finally I did it. I learned some of the reasons why people liked it so much and why people were visiting it.

Once more I was able to reproduce it. Not only did it make things a lot easier on me, but I actually started to see the kind of results I wanted. Roughly one year later that site went from having 150 visitors a day to more than 3,000 visitors a day and I didn’t have to work so much on the site and could let it grow by itself.

The strategy I used there was incredibly simple. I looked for the 20% of things that were causing 80% of the results and then copied those top 20%. Or in my case I looked for the top 0.3% of the pages that were giving me 26% of the results and focused on them.

Using the 80 20 principle In Your Own Life

The great thing about the 80 20 principle is that it can be used in just about every area of life. You just have to look around and observe the world.

What are the 20% of things you do that give you 80% of your happiness? Have 20% of your actions produced 80% of your friends and relationships in life? If you have a business, do 20% of your customers generate 80% of your profits?

The easiest and best way to use the 80 20 principle is to start looking at your actions and your results. You will inevitably find that some of your actions produce a lot more results then other actions. Take this as a learning point, start to focus on things that do seem to lead you to more results and maybe walk away from things that do not produce you very many results.

When you focus on only the most important things in your life you will find that you can work a lot less and accomplish a lot more. As you apply it to other areas of your life it will help you to grow and to become the kind of person you truly wish to be in life.

Of course if you ignore it you are only wasting your time shooting in the dark and doing things that you think will help you. In the same way 1 extraordinary page on my site produced as much as 95 regular pages on that same site we all have things that we do that are producing us little to no results and at the same time we all do things that are producing us extraordinary results. The goal is to separate them and use it to improve our lives as a whole.

So, now for the big question, examine your life and ask yourself. “What are the 20% of things I do now that are giving me 80% of the results and how can I do more of them?”

10 Motivational Startegies That Work

How to Get Organized

Creating Your Perfect Life Plan

Creating a life plan can have a huge impact on your future, yet so many people still have no idea of where they see themselves in 5 years. Their only goal is to stay alive and hope that everything works out in the long run.

I guess that is the reason why so many people look back at their life and wonder where the time has gone and whatever happened to all of the things they wanted to accomplish.

To me creating a life plan is critical. It can give you hope, help you to accomplish wonderful things and helps you to live a much happier life in general, which is why I have created my own plan, and wrote this article with a free personal development plan template download at the bottom so that my readers can create their own plan using the same method I did.

But first …

Why Bother Creating a Life Plan Anyways?

“He who fails to plan is planning to fail.”Winston Churchill

There are a number of reasons why I believe it is important to write down your goals for the future.

• It Keeps You Focused In One Direction

If you don’t know where you are going then you don’t know what path to take. This might set you up for failure even if you are working hard, because you are not working hard at the right things or you are working hard at too many things to see results.

• It Helps You See The Big Picture

It can be hard to exercise every day, but if your goal is to lose weight it will be easier to get out of bed and start exercising because you see the bigger picture of being 10 pounds lighter.

• It Helps You See More Opportunities

Another factor of having a clearly defined goal is that it helps you see more opportunities to advance in life. I would have never looked at blogging if I did not know what my goals where. It is a whole experience I would have completely missed.

• It Does Seem To Work

There have been studies out there which seem to indicate how important writing goals down are. According to one study the people who wrote down their goals achieved more than those who didn’t. If you’re looking to achieve more it only make sense to write your goals down too.

• It Helps Attract What You Want

I am a big believer that there is some force out there which draws us towards the things we think about. It may simply be due to the above 4 factors working together or it may be something else entirely. The only thing I can say is that something seems to help us along the way and push us to meeting the right people and be in the right situation to achieve the things we actively pursue.

What to Think About

Before you start creating your life plan you should do some brainstorming and think about the things that you truly want out of life.

“It pays to plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.” Thomas Edison

A few things to consider are;

• What Do You Want People To Say About You After You Are Gone

Michael Hyatt wrote an interesting article called What Will They Say When You Are Dead, which he invites us to think about what we want the people closest to us to say after we are dead. This is a powerful exercise because it can help us to take a second thought on some of our goals and daily habits.

• What Kind Of Life Do You Want To Live?

Think about this, where do you see yourself in 10 years? What kind of car do you drive? What kind of house do you live in?

In addition to that ask yourself what kind of lifestyle you really want. Do you want all of the excitement that comes from a Go-Go personality? Or do you want a lot of leisure time to relax while still being stable in other areas of your life?

• What Do You Want To Accomplish?

What do you want to do in your life? Do you have any major goals in life that you want to see yourself achieve? Why is it important to you?

Think about these three questions before you move on and fill out the personal development plan templar. It would be a good idea to set aside an entire day to think about this and plan your future. Do some soul searching before you just write down a regurgitated goal you got from someone else.

It should be something you really are committed to because you want to do it, and you are not just following it because of someone else.

“Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.” Thomas Alva Edison

Free Personal Development Plan Template

Once you have an idea what you want to do with your life, you can download your Free Personal Development Plan Template Here.

You can add or redo some of the items on the template to fit your own needs. As it stands now there is a spot for;

Professional
Financial
Love Life
Social Life
Health
Spiritual

Some areas will be easy to fill out because you probably already have an idea of your goals in that area. Other areas might be a lot harder to figure out since you may not have put much thought into them before.

But they all work nicely together when creating a life plan and although your life may change as you grow; it is good to get something written down now so you know which direction to take today to lead to a better tomorrow.

“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow” George s Patton

7 Lies We Tell Ourselves About Success

Why is Time Management Important

How to Stop Procrastination

Why is time management important? Why can’t we just create a list of things we want to do and get to them when we get to them? It sure seems easier.

The problem with not managing your time is that it leads to a lot of time leakage. Time leakage occurs when you waste your time away doing things that don’t help you advance in life, like watching t.v. or chatting around on facebook instead of doing the important things you need to take care of.

Wasting time a few times during the day may not seem like a lot, but if you add it all up it can lead to weeks and months of lost time throughout the year.

How Much Time Do You Really Waste?

When I was a little boy I remember my dad had a leaking faucet in his bathroom. Even when you turned the faucet completely off it still leaked drop by drop minute by minute. At the time I didn’t want to waste water so I put a cup just below the faucet so that each drop would fall into the cup, instead of going down the drain.

A few hours later my dad went into the bathroom to find a cup full of water. He was amazed that a problem he thought was small managed to add up and fill up a cup of water over just a couple hours. At that point he decided to fix the faucet right away.

I like to use this analogy for dealing with time. Time is like a leaking faucet. Each minute it drips away. Now hopefully there is a large reserve of water on the other side. But even a large reserve is going to disappear after a while if it is constantly being dripped away.

Similar to this example, we only have a limited amount of time on this planet. This means we have to make good use of the time we do have.

When we waste our time away it is like a faucet dripping down the drain. Our time is not being spent on anything useful and when it is over there will be nothing left to show the world that we were alive, just as once the water reserves are up there is no water left to do anything with.

On the other hand when we are actively pursuing our dreams in life and getting the most out of our time it is as if we have placed a cup below the leaking faucet. Each drip goes into building something even greater that we can use later on down the road.

“Time = life; therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life.” Alan Lakein

Now that doesn’t mean you can never take the cup away from the leaking faucet. Once in a while it is ok to pick up the cup, enjoy the fruits of your labor and let the faucet drip. But if you do it too much you will have nothing to show for it.

The side benefit of keeping a cup below the faucet is that we may get lucky and still have water left in it to help others and to leave our own legacy behind. In other words we have something to show for our time on this planet. There is still evidence that we were here and that we accomplished something even after we are gone.

For me that is a best answer to the question, why is time management important?

From Why is Time Management Important to Effective Time Management Strategies

Now that we know, why is time management important the next question would be, how can we get more out of our day? In the article, how to stop procrastination I talked about the importance of keeping a schedule for everything you wish to accomplish throughout the day. I’d like to go more into detail about that here.

One of the most effective time management techniques is to simply keep a schedule for all the things you wish to accomplish throughout the day. This way you have a rough idea of what you will be able to do and at what time you’ll do it at.

The first step is to write down what you want to do during the day. For instance on a random day some of the things I might want to get accomplished are.

• Write an Article For The Blog
• Eat Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner
• Email Back Some Other Website Owners
• Pick Up Groceries
• Promote My Sites
• Go For A Walk
• Relax With Friends

I like to include everything in my schedule from what I have to work on, what I want to work on, and what I want to do on my free time. This way I can make sure that I truly make room for the things I want to get done as well as time for myself to relax and have fun.

“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.”
Charles Richards

Next you want to schedule a time for each item. Figure out how much time you think something will take and then put it on the schedule. In that imaginary list above my schedule might look like this.

8:30-9:00 Eat Breakfast
9:00-10:00 Go For a Walk
10:00-11:00 Pick Up Groceries
11:00 – 12:00 Email Back Some Other Webmasters
12:00 -1:00 Eat Lunch
1:00 – 4:00 Write Article For My Site
4:00 – 5:30 Promote My Sites
5:30 – 6:00 Eat Dinner
6:00 – 11:00 Relax With Friends

That would be a productive day, since I got everything done that I wanted to get done, while at the same time I got to relax. If I had more things on my schedule then I would have to set aside some time for them as well.

Of course this would just be a rough idea of what my day would look like. Since things don’t always go according to plan there may be some judgment calls along the way. But at least there is a plan in place which will let me accomplish everything I want to accomplish throughout the day.

Raping everything up, why is time management important? Because there is only a limited amount of it, how can you do more with your time? Think in advance and create a schedule for your day.

how to stop procrastination

7 Lies We Tell Ourselves About Success

How to stop procrastination? That is a question I’m sure we have all asked ourselves from time to time. Procrastinating leads to stress, lack of accomplishment, and low self-esteem, so it is something we don’t exactly want in our day to day routine.

As I grow it seems like I am taking more control in my life and I am able to accomplish more with less, but stopping procrastination is still an ongoing battle for me and I imagine it is a major problem for you as well.

So, let’s look at some of the things I consider to be important steps to take in order to accomplish more in the day and to start overcoming procrastination.

Make Time For Work And Time For Play

One of the reasons I procrastinate is simply because I want to go out and have fun. I want to Stumbleupon the web or play poker with my friends. Having a window in the same room that I am typing was a huge distraction for me when I first started to write online.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to have a little fun time. But you also have to have your work time where you accomplish all of the things you know needs to be done.

“The perfect day consists of 8 hours of rest, 8 hours of work, and 8 hours of play.” Benjamin Franklin

Scheduling a time to work and a time to play seems to help me get more done in the day and not have to work so hard as a result. When I know that I will be able to have fun later I do not mind doing a little work now.

The important thing to remember here is to SCHEDULE THE WORK FIRST! At least until you get used to working with a schedule.

The reason being this is that, you are more likely to push the work back on your schedule if you are playing now and planning on working later. This is exactly what we are trying to avoid.

By planning on doing the work before the fun, the “having fun” part becomes more like a reward for all of the work you have accomplished.

Reduce Workload If Possible

Ironically the times that I procrastinate the most are the times when I have the most work to accomplish. If I am running around doing 15 different things in the day, procrastination becomes a safe haven for me. Even though I know that I am only making things worse for my future self.

The way to start overcoming procrastination when you are overwhelmed is to try and make things easier on yourself. Again look at the things that you need to do and make a schedule to accomplish the important ones.

While doing that look for things that you can either push out to a later date or completely eliminate from your schedule. I know pushing things to a later date might seems like you are procrastinating a little, but if your workload is so overwhelming that it is causing you to shut down it may be better to focus on only accomplishing the most important stuff now and taking care of everything else when your schedule clears up.

Another way to reduce your workload would be to look for creative ways of getting more things done with less time. I often outsource mundane items so that I can concentrate on more important issues in my life.

If money is an issue you might also want to see what items other people will willingly help you out with. You never know unless you ask, especially if it is something that will benefit them too.

Learn to Enjoy Your Work

This is probably the most helpful advice on how to stop procrastination. I fully believe that you should focus your energy on obtaining a work that you enjoy doing. This way you want to do it and it is not so much of a chore rather a work of passion.

If it is something that you just have to do, finding a way to make it fun can make your life easier. For example if you are a student and want to know how to stop procrastination with homework, the first thing you can do is to actually learn what the subject matter is about and relate it to something you already love about life.

If you can learn to love the subject then you can do the work a lot easier and with less time.

Keep Moving

It is amazing how well this actually works. We tend to get into the routine of things. When we are lazy our body wants us to keep being lazy and when we are actively accomplishing things our body wants us to keep moving.

Since I have been in the habit of always doing something for so long it can be pretty difficult for me to just sit down and watch T.V. or take naps in the middle of the day. My body simply wants to keep moving.

“We are all creatures of habit. We can do most things without even thinking about them; our bodies take charge and do them for us.” Earl Nightingale

If you are in the habit of being lazy and procrastinating your work then overcoming procrastination is going to take some effort to get started. As you start to move and keep overcoming procrastination you begin to build some momentum behind you that makes it easier and easier to get things done.

Something helpful you can do is to take a month where you decide to keep an active schedule in your life. By the end of that month not only will you have accomplished a lot more then you did in the previous month, but it will also be a lot easier for you to “just get things done” then it was before.

Realize That It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect

Sometimes being a perfectionist can make it harder to get started. If you are trying to make things perfect then just starting your work is going to be impossible. Everything has flaws in it and there is no such thing as perfect.

“Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly.” Robert Schuller

The solution is to realize that you are human and that you will make mistakes in life. There is just no way to get around that simple fact. However as you do more you grow more..

Life isn’t about shooting for some unreachable goal of perfection, but about learning and growing to be the best that you can be. Once you realize that everything doesn’t have to be perfect, you will be able to accomplish so much more and take bigger chances in life. Of course you want to do your best on your work, but don’t let perfection stop you from starting something.

Do you have any tips on how to stop procrastination? I’d like to hear them.

7 Lies We Tell Ourselves About Success

Motivation Is For Suckers!