Nearly three months ago I left the relative rural solitude of South Wales to visit the big lights of London town. Ever the country bumpkin, the cars were faster, lights were brighter and everything bigger. I had a wonderful time both in college (the real reason for my trip) and later going sight-seeing with my dad (an added bonus!)

As is often the case with college, I was given an assignment to do by the time I return to college on March 5th, one week from today. Just to shorten the deadline a little, one of the students asked the tutor if we should email him our work ahead of the next teaching day. The tutor thought this was a brilliant idea

The problem

So here’s my dilemma: I have an assignment to do by some time before March 5th. I need to read books, reflect on the books and try some things out before writing up an evaluation of the whole thing. So when should I start?

On December 6th I dutifully sat at the lap top … and wrote a single paragraph. When I opened that document today I saw it there waving at me, teasing me with it’s shortness.

Because I’ve been doing what everyone says you really shouldn’t do when you have a task to complete – procrastinating. The longer I left it, the harder it was to start. The books I was supposed to be reading were supplemented by others which seemed much more interesting and pressing. It’s hard to reflect on a book you haven’t read and so things were pretty stationary.

Between you and I, getting this done has been something of a black cloud looming over me. Every night for the last few weeks I’ve told myself that I’ll get cracking with it, just as soon as I get that pressing blog post up I haven’t lost sleep over it (except the morning when I got up at 5am to finish reading one of the books) but it’s been there, niggling at me.

A solution?

Late last month I learned some time management hints from The Big Red Tomato Company. When 6 Aliens advocated early morning work routines I wondered if that might be the answer to my problems. And just a few days ago I smiled wryly at a post about paperwork from the lovely Heather of Shades of a Dream. But the word count remained static.

Until today. Whilst it’s not finished, I have a healthy 5371 words under my belt. Better than that, I now know how to continue and get finished. This was not something that looked promising just 12 hours ago. Originally this post was to be called ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ because having made good progress, the black cloud has lightened. However, as is often the case with anecdotal evidence, this has developed into much more of a encouragement to not procrastinate than anything related to worry.

Therefore, in keeping with any half decent post containing advice, here’s how I got rid of the black cloud. If you’ve got something you really need to get done, give this a try:

Get ready

Gather everything you need in one place. Make a cup of tea (or grab a Red Bull if that’s more your style ) and prepare anything else that needs preparing so that once you start, you can make good progress.

Set

Remove all distractions. Remember all those great blog posts I’ve been enjoying recently? They were worth every second I spent reading them. However, when you’re getting prepared for that important task, turn off your email, set your phone to voice mail, unless you need it for the task, don’t even think about opening your favourite web browser. And your RSS feed? Step away, leave it well alone until after you have finished.

Go

Instead of waiting until you are completely confident of the beginning, middle and ending of what you need to get done, get ready, set and just make a start. Planning is usually highly recommended but when we’re talking about that something you’ve been putting off doing, chances are you’ve done enough mental planning to enable you to begin. In severe cases of procrastination such as this, it really is far better to just start!

So what do you think? What must-do tasks are you putting off?

Tagged as: procrastination