10 Minute Tip #1: Get Started Now.

I always have lots of projects that need to get done and I’m always thinking of more things to do, too. So I’ve got a list of projects that are “do them right now” projects and a list of projects that are “it would be nice to do these when I’m less busy” projects. Guess what: Items from that second list rarely get crossed off. It’s not a procrastination problem, it’s just that the projects in the “do right now” list take precedence, usually because they are revenue-generating work for clients.

However, that big “nice to do” list still needs to get done and, in my case, often includes long-term business growth ideas that will ensure my business is still running a decade from now. So, how do I do these? I use the 10 minute tip of Getting Started Now. I recognize that it might take me a while to finish and maybe I don’t even know what the project will look like when it’s done, but I sit down and I do something – anything on the project – for 10 minutes. For example, if it’s an ebook, I’ll sit down for 10 minutes and maybe start writing the introduction or perhaps a table of contents. It’s not much but it’s something. Here’s what I find: By the time 10 minutes is up, I’ve figured out what I need to do on the project and I’ve even figured out if the project is right for me to continue on. That time is valuable to me to help me figure out if I should move it to the “do it now” list or not.

10 Minute Tip #2: Touch projects every day.

My day is filled with lots of little projects that, once done, can be crossed off my list. But my day is also filled with big projects that I don’t actually complete in a single day (or often in a single week). But I’ve found that I am far more productive on these big projects if I do something on them for 10 minutes each day. This keeps them at the top of my mind so when I sit down to do a large amount of work on the project, I don’t have to spend my time getting refreshed.
Just take 10 minutes and move the project forward somehow. I don’t know how; it depends on the project. It might be just adding a couple paragraphs of ideas or creating an outline for the next chapter. One thing you don’t want to do is just review the work because that is less valuable and doesn’t keep the project’s momentum going.

10 Minute Tip #3: Take time to remember why you do this.

I try to make my tips really practical – stuff you can use in your business. And this is less practical but I think it is still pretty important: Sometimes, when you’re bogged down in details and you’re frustrated at your clients or your payables or your receivables or your productivity or the quality of your work, it’s good to take ten minutes and step back from it all and remember why you do what you do. Chances are, you got into your business because you have an interest in the industry, you have some talent in the work you do, you don’t want to work for someone else, and you want to build something of value for the future (perhaps to retire or perhaps to pass on to your kids). Those are four big reasons and you might have other reasons as well. Take a moment and remind yourself of these. It helps to put your day back into perspective when the frustrations and annoyances seem bigger than they really are.

10 Minute Tip #4: Avoid distractions.

The web is a great thing to be connected to… most of the time! But sometimes we find ourselves happily working away and then suddenly struck with a tangent of an idea and – bam – we’re distracted with something that isn’t the best thing to be doing at the time. To solve this, I keep a piece of paper at my desk. It’s just a scratch paper – the kind you might use to doodle while you’re on the phone. I never write anything important on it, but it usually gets filled up by the end of the day with little scribbles and notes and whatever. But one thing I use it for is distractions.

Rather than immediately following those mental rabbit-trails that are not EXACTLY related to the thing I’m working on, I write down my idea on the paper. And later, when the project I should be working on is done, I look up the non-related rabbit trails. My big weakness is business-related rabbit trails that often have to do with extending my current business in some way. But I do know of someone whose weakness is stock market quotes and when he thinks of something stock related, he drops everything and goes in search of the stock quote. And someone else I know is a recipe fiend and she’ll suddenly think of a delicious idea and she pursues that rabbit trail. So, put a piece of paper on your desk and when you have that great idea, write it down for later instead of following it up right now.

10 Minute Tip #5: Scrutinize your actions and shave off the seconds.

I have a big calendar on my wall with all of the days of the year on it. In theory, it’s there for me to glance up and see what’s coming up. The problem is, every single time that I look at it, I end up searching for the month that I’m in. Yes, of course I know what month it is. But it’s a big calendar and, once you get into the middle of the year and the months are clustered together, it’s easy to catch yourself looking at the wrong month, just for a moment. So I’ve started putting an “X” through the months that are done. It’s not a big thing but it’s enough for me to quickly see where we are. With the amount of time that I look at that calendar every day, it’s just enough to shave a few seconds off every time I look at the calendar. And those seconds add up.

And here’s another example: I sign into a bunch of sites first thing in the morning – project management sites, social networking sites, etc. But not all of the sites give you a place on the first page to sign-in. Sometimes you have to click through to a second page to sign in. So I’ve bookmarked the sign-in page, not the first page of the sites I go to. Again, it’s not a big thing but it shaves off seconds of unnecessary clicking. And those seconds add up. Scrutinize your actions and look for unnecessary things that might only take a second here or a second there but have a cumulative impact on your productivity.

On their own, these ideas aren’t huge. But it’s often the little things that add up and make a big difference. I have a few more of these ideas and I’ll post another Tips In Ten like this in a few weeks’ time.

Related posts:

1. End Procrastination in Ten Minutes
2. Business Growth in Ten Minutes a Day
3. Better Firefox Usage in 10 Minutes

Or, worse yet (in my situation and maybe for you, too) is to have a big project that needs to be done and a million smaller work-related projects as well. We should be doing the big project but we end up working on the little ones. It all needs to be done… be we know in our hearts that we really should be working on the big project!

Over the years I’ve collected a series of procrastination-busting techniques that work effectively for me (yes, even I find myself tempted to procrastinate from time to time). I’d like to share some of those tips in this article. You’ll find that many of these take about ten minutes each, which make them perfect for quick procrastination busting throughout the day.

Record what you do in the day: You can use a simple printable calendar to write down how you spend your time. Record it in 15 minute increments and take a moment every hour to update it. Not only does the act of recording help to keep you on track (you’re less likely to procrastinate if you’re thinking about it), it is a way for you to catch yourself procrastinating in the day. Track yourself for a week to analyze. And, I’ll bet you many of you find it so helpful that you will continue to track your time on an ongoing basis.

There are great tools online to help you do this: TimeSprite, for example, is a program that sits on your desktop and every minute it records the active window you’re using. Then it gives you a report at the end of the day of how you used your time. This won’t help if you leave a window open and step away from your computer, but if you’re the kind of person to procrastinate with Bejewelled when you should be working, it can be a wake-up call. You should also check out this list of computer-based and web-based procrastination-killing time-tracking tools: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-tools-to-track-how-you-spend-time-online/.

Spot the problem times: We all have times in the day when we don’t feel up to work. We sit at our desks and pretend to work but really we just mess around on Twitter or our email. If you know of specific times in the day when you tend to procrastinate more (such as before lunch or at about 3 PM) you can find other things to do during those times that are a bit easier. Tracking your day is helpful for this analysis.

Keep a list of tasks with durations: One key anti-procrastination technique I use is to list the anticipated duration that I expect a project will take. Then, if I have five minutes before I have to turn the oven on for supper, I look at my schedule and do a five minute project.

Outsource the pain: One of the reasons that we procrastinate is because we’re about to do a job that isn’t pleasant and we don’t want to. (Certainly that’s not always the case, but it often is). If you have an assistant or a virtual assistant, this would be an excellent thing to outsource. Either give them the entire task that you don’t want to do or break it up and only give them the portion that you find unpleasant, while keeping the rest for yourself.

Be proactive and think about all of the things you do in your day that you don’t like to do. Give those to your assistant to proactively remove procrastination before it can even start.

Keep your deadlines short: Ever notice something weird about procrastination? We procrastinate frequently until the deadline is looming. Suddenly, every excuse we used to make for procrastination no longer works. We become uber-productive! Use that to your advantage: Rather than creating a two week deadline and procrastinating for the first week, create a one week deadline and feel the productivity pressure right away! (I have a friend who swears by this method and he says it helps him stay busy at work). The only drawbacks, of course, are that there isn’t a lot of margin built in for error and there’s always a sense of foreboding deadlines. But if your goal is to eliminate procrastination, that might be your solution.

Break your project up: Often, we procrastinate because all we see is a giant, unwieldy, and poorly defined project in front of us. So, as the first step of every project, sit down for ten minutes and break the project up into smaller pieces. Break them up into very small chunks – chunks that will only take a few minutes each to do. Then do them. One by one. If time allows, do one an hour or one a day. It will seem so much easier (and chances are, it might actually go faster, too).

Set your clock and do a five minute burst: This is my favorite anti-procrastination idea right now. I have a timer on my desktop. And when I find myself tempted to procrastinate about a project, I turn on my timer and do as much as I possibly can in five minutes. For me, it’s no longer about avoiding the project but it’s more like a contest with myself to see how much I can do. I’m aiming for quantity not quality at this point… I can always go back and fix the quality if I need to, but the point here is to sort-of “pop the cork” and get the thought-process flowing. Once that cork is popped, the procrastination ends and I go work on the project easily. I just needed that initial “oomph” to get me started. You’ll actually be amazed at how much you can do in five minutes, too, by the way!

Give yourself some variety: This is related to above. I used to find that procrastination would occur at the prospect of working for two solid hours on a project. So instead, I would plan my day to work in 20 minute rotating shifts on a few different projects. I could get quite a bit done and had enough variety to want to work. (And in case you wonder if I have ADHD, let me assure you that I don’t; it’s just that some projects – BIG projects – aren’t things that I want to spend a solid mind-numbing block of 2 hours on).

Envision success: This is where you envision the successful completion of your project as a result of your focused, diligent, efficient, and productive effort. If you bill by the project, this is where you envision earning the billable revenue. If it’s a non-billable project, this is where you envision the success you’ll gain because of the completed work. This method is okay; it’s one I’ve read frequently in time management and procrastination books. I have seen it work successfully in some cases, although some of my clients admit that it’s hard to remember to do when you’re in the middle of procrastinating.

Figure out what your tempters are: We all have different procrastination “tempters”. I’ve mentioned the more popular ones throughout this issue – Facebook, Twitter, email, Bejewelled, etc. At the time it may not feel like procrastination but you know as you read this that a couple of them are your “go-to” places when you’re procrastinating. Figuring out your procrastination tempter is the first step. The second step is to avoid it. For example, use Facebook or Bejewelled as rewards after a certain period of work.

The biggest challenge in this area is when you procrastinate by doing one type of work instead of another – such as is often the case with email and Twitter. It’s very difficult to identify and manage this because it’s still work. In those cases, I would advise that you schedule time to check your email and Twitter once every hour or once every 90 minutes. Some of you won’t like that; some of you will say it’s impossible; but if you’re serious about ending procrastination and if email or Twitter (or some other work-related activity) is your procrastination tempter, then you will need to be more intentional with them.

Reward yourself: I’ve already hinted at this. Reward yourself for a period of uninterrupted work-time. Use some of your procrastination tempters as the reward. However, just make sure that you don’t spend as much time on your reward as you do on your work!

Pre-planning: I’ve found that pre-planning some of my work is an effective weapon against procrastination. One of the reasons that I’ve caught myself procrastinating in the past has been because I get to a project and I have to think about that project. Maybe I need to do some research, for example. Suddenly, that 2 hour project becomes a 3 hour project! But if I do some initial thinking, planning, and research and then let it “percolate” in my mind overnight or for a couple of days, when it comes time for me to work on the project, I’m bubbling over with ideas and enthusiasm for the project!

Procrastination isn’t something we schedule, but it quickly takes over our schedule! It’s not easy to fight against because it’s not something we plan for. I’m convinced that more entrepreneurs will be way more successful if they can identify procrastination and eliminate it to recapture more of their time in the day. Use these tips to help you fight procrastination everyday. You’ll get more done, earn higher revenue, and spend less time at your desk!

Related posts:

1. The P Word
2. Get Way More Done in Just 10 Minutes a Day
3. Mastering the First Ten Minutes of Your Day

But trust me, this is a cult you’ll WANT to join.

Here’s how I stumbled upon this cult: I was totally looking for something else but I found this blog and thought: “yeah, I’m all over this, It’s called “the cult of done”. Two people – Bre Pettis and Kio Stark – wrote a manifesto about productivity. It’s simple and elegant. It’s just 13 points. And when you read them, you’ll be inspired! Oddly enough, they wrote it in just 20 minutes and I wonder if that time pressure added to its simplicity and elegance.

You can read the full blog, The Cult of Done Manifesto, but I’ve listed the 13 points below (in bold) and added my own comments afterward.

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion. This is brilliant because it helps you identify what your Next Action is. If you don’t know, then your next action is to learn. If you know then your next action is action. And once you’ve taken enough actions, your next action is completion!

2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done. This is great. Perfection is very challenging to attain and yet people strive for it all the time. Accepting this truth is so freeing.

3. There is no editing stage. Produce, publish, repeat. If everything is a draft, this makes it easier to embrace.

4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it. This is a humorous line that boils down to this: Charge ahead, even if you’re not sure, because you’ll figure out. The default should be always be action.

5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it. This one is tough to do! And I confess that I don’t follow this one because sometimes I like to let ideas simmer for a while. But the spirit of this idea holds true.

6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done. This is an interesting one and I have to think about it a bit more. I understand what they are saying but I wonder if they’ve presented it too simplistically here.

7. Once you’re done you can throw it away. Uhh, okay I disagree with this for the most part. I have client work that is often done… and then needs to be revisted. But I think they are saying that completion should be a full state and that you shouldn’t only half-complete something but call it complete.

8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done. This is true and resonates with some of the earlier points. Perfection is unattainable, which makes it laughable.

9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right. You need to work to be a successful completer of something. And work means rolling up your sleeves and risking your manicure.

10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes. I like this one! We can’t all be perfect all the time! If I do something and it falls flat, I can still cross it off my list as being done. Completion doesn’t necessarily mean success all the time (although it’s nice if it did now and then).

11. Destruction is a variant of done. This is interesting. I have to think about this one some more. Pulling something apart is an act of completion: I can see that if you learn something and are able to innovate as a result.

12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done. I suppose they are recommending that telling is different than doing. Fair enough. I think this is mainly true unless your goal is to publish something on the internet, of course!

13. Done is the engine of more. I love this! This is true! People with long lists of procrastinated work have growing lists of procrastinated work. My dad taught me an important lesson a long time ago: If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. It’s true! Busy people may be busy but they are doing things!

If you like this list, check out the picture posted on Bre Pettis’ website, which is a printable poster with graphical representations of the tenets of the cult of done: Done Manifesto.

Join the cult!

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With only hours to go before 2010, your planning is probably finished. Your strategizing is tucked away. Your dreams are sitting on your desk, waiting for you to show up on Monday morning. You’ve done everything you can do this year and now it’s coming to close.

And the champagne is flowing generously.

Before things get too carried away, over the next few hours, take a moment to pause and consider what I’m about to tell you: The week between Christmas and New Year is often an INSANE week, filled with gifts and festive activities and diets-be-damned eating. And the entire year leading up to this moment has been INSANE for many people, filled with bad news compounded by bad news. This past week – and this past year – has possibly been all about you running around and trying not to go crazy.

All that is about to change
Take a brief moment and reset your thinking. Make the following 10 promises to yourself for 2010:

1.    Promise to give the very best of yourself to every customer you meet. (They will reciprocate with repeat business).

2.    Promise to be positive, upbeat, enthusiastic, optimistic, and encouraging. (Smile brightly and the world will smile back).

3.    Promise to see every crisis as an opportunity. (You might just find the springboard to stellar success).

4.    Promise to invest in yourself and your business. (You know it takes money to make money… so spend a bit on your business).

5.    Promise to be more productive and make the most of every moment. (You can do more in the same amount of time).

6.    Promise to find the balance between work and family. (It’s a reward that can’t be counted).

7.    Promise to leap into new challenges. (Action and boldness are key ingredients that will help this year to be spectacular).

8.    Promise to be productive and to fight procrastination at ever turn. (Cut out that time playing Farmville in Facebook in favor of more revenue-generation).

9.    Promise to focus on operating a smart, efficient, profitable business. (That’s what it’s all about).

10.    Promise yourself that 2010 will be a great year for you and for your business. (It all starts with this decision).

These promises aren’t pie-in-the-sky dreams. They are achievable every single day and the business that commits to these 10 promises will have a successful 2010.

Here’s what I’d recommend
Write these promises to yourself. Put them on your desk. Read them every day before your day starts and review them every day before you sign off for the evening. If you’re REALLY serious about succeeding and these promises make sense to you, then create a metric for each one and use them as a checklist. (For example, for the “see every crisis as an opportunity” promise, why not create a list of things that stress you out and then choose on each week and find the opportunity in it).

When you countdown and shout “Happy New Year” today, you’re not just celebrating the turn of the calendar, you’re saying goodbye to a year of challenge and saying hello to a year of opportunity. This is an exciting time for business owners!

On that note:

10…
9…
8…
7…
6…
5..
4…
3…
2…
1…

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Time for some honesty!
We don’t always finish as well as we’d like. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve managed to finish my fair share of projects (which is why I’m still in business). But finishing feels different. There comes a point when you move past the excited “Look at me, I’m setting goals” stage of the project and it turns into a bit of a grind. (Not a bad grind, necessarily, but a grind nonetheless). This is where the details need to be dotted and crossed. This is where the review needs to happen. And, in my experience, this is also where procrastination can take place, especially among visionary entrepreneurs who prefer thinking big.

It happens on a daily basis, too. We start the day well: Steaming cup of coffee in hand, a good breakfast just completed, and an entire day of promise ahead. But by 4PM it hits. Like a freight train filled with lethargy. We get a quarter of the work done. We find ourselves browsing the web mindlessly. We discover that we’ve just spent half an hour playing Bejeweled on Facebook.

We all love to start well and there are lots of resources out there to help us start well. (Your planner or calendar is one of them and your Venti Mochaccino is another). But what about finishing well? There are fewer resources, tools, tricks, or techniques that we’re aware of.

But recently, I happened across a great blog by entrepreneur Mason Hipp of FreelanceFolder.com. Hipps’ blog “5 Easy Ways to Finish Your Day With a Bang” is exactly that: 5 things you can do to push through those lethargic, Bejeweled doldrums and finish well.

Article summary: Entrepreneurs can finish well each day

I’ll summarize his five points for you with a few of my own thoughts.

1.    Set your own end time. This is huge, especially for solopreneurs who work at home. When that rerun of “The Office” is on, it can be tempting to go back into your own office and work. But putting time aside for other activities will make you enjoy your work (and get more done) during work time.

2.    Eat an afternoon snack. Blood sugar is a contributing factor to lethargy and around 3PM or 4PM our blood sugar hits a low, which is why companies have a 3PM coffee break for employees. Unfortunately, we entrepreneurs forget that we need that break, too.

3.    Go for a walk. Get the blood moving! I like this. Maybe get the kids from school. Maybe mow the lawn. Maybe take the dog for a walk.

4.    Review your priorities. This one is tricky! Hipp suggests that you look at what you have left on your list and figure out what’s a priority. But most of the entrepreneurs I know would say “but it’s ALL a priority”. Still, this is good advice if you can actually do it.

5.    Get excited. I like this one because, as I said, I love new beginnings. That excitement of the day has usually worn off by the mid-afternoon so it’s good to feel that the rest of the day is like a new beginning (albeit a short one!).

Good luck! And Finish Well!

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Our time is precious: We have 24 hours each day and we want to eat, sleep, spend time with family and friends, and let’s not forget about taking a little “me time” to catch the latest episode of “So You Think You Can Dance”. Oh, and we need to work somewhere in there, too.

It just makes sense that we continue to learn how to work more effectively so we can earn the same money but spend less time doing it. The rewards, of course, are more time doing the things we enjoy doing.

Recently read: Productivity tips for professionals

Recently, I came across this article in the Insurance Journal, Declare Your Personal War on Time Poverty, written by Scott Simmonds, a consultant for the insurance industry. The article is written for insurance professionals (brokers or agents), but when you read it you’ll agree that you can change a couple of the facts and terminology and it will apply equally as well to…

• teachers
• managers
• doctors
• librarians
• entrepreneurs
• CEO’s
• … you name it.

With some changes, this article really is applicable to everyone.

It’s applicable to all business owners and professionals

The article begins by describing the problem that insurance professionals have: They have numerous time demands and it can feel like sheer chaos to try and get it all done. (Sounds like the rest of us).

Then the article goes on to recommend that the first step is to create systems that help to keep things moving, avoid procrastination, and ensure that things get done. The article compares broker quote processes to LL Bean’s extremely efficient buying system. This is a good reminder for the rest of us: Stop reinventing the wheel every time we have to do something. If we do it more than once, create a process and stick to it… and eventually aim to outsource that process.

While meetings are a necessity, the article’s author hates them and gives some great tips (and a funny rant) on how to improve (or eliminate) meetings. Even if you implement half of what he suggests into your meetings, your meeting times will shorten dramatically and you will get more done. (Disclosure: I realize meetings are a necessity and I’m not suggesting that they be eliminated entirely. But most of us would agree that they can carry on much longer than they need to).

Lastly, Simmonds provides readers with some great tips about mastering time in various ways. From keeping a clean desk to the traditional A, B, C prioritization method, most of these won’t be new to you at all. However, they always serve as good reminders of best practices to adopt.

And, it’s nice to know that even outside of our own industries, professionals in other industries face the same problems.

Happy Blogging!

Related posts:

1. 5 Common Productivity Barriers and How to Eliminate Them
2. 10 Minutes a Day For Better Staff Productivity
3. 10 Tips to Boost Productivity

Delegation that has fallen through the cracks: If you’re relying on something from someone else, and they’re not delivering, you need to get things moving by nudging them, then pushing them, then threatening them (in that order). If possible, continue on with other aspects of the project. At some point, you may need to replace them and that’s something you should start working on between the “push them” and “threaten them” stage.

Lack of clarity: This is a bigger issue than most people realize and it is often the unknown reason for project slowdown. It happens when you’ve divided up tasks and are performing one task after another and then you hit a wall and can’t quite seem to start or finish the next task in the list. I’ve found that the reason is actually quite simple: The next task in the list is poorly defined or much larger and more unwieldy than the other tasks. So you can often “unstick” your project by breaking that task down into smaller parts.

Procrastination: Procrastination happens because there’s often something we’d rather be doing. It’s human nature. Sometimes it’s because that other task is more enjoyable, but often it’s because we don’t want to work on the task at hand. The best thing to do is just to delegate it. This isn’t always possible, but it’s the best scenario. Get someone else to do it and when they do, you’ll probably find that it unlocks the project’s momentum. If you can’t delegate that task, try delegating a portion of it. Or, ask for help.

No deadline: This is another one of those critical but not-easily-recognized problems. Humans need deadlines. We don’t like them, we fight them, we push the deadline limits, but we NEED to have that due date. Sometimes in projects we’ll have due dates for larger objectives and, of course, for the end goal, but we don’t have deadlines for the smaller tasks. Ironically, it’s these smaller tasks which get pushed back and pushed back (because of a lack of deadlines!) and they build up to risk the project’s timely completion. So, set deadlines for everything.

Lack of definitions: In a way this is related to the “lack of clarity” above, but it is a broader-based problem. Lack of clarity is tied to specific tasks while lack of definition is tied to the project as a whole. Areas where I’ve seen a lack of definition stall a project: The outcome wasn’t clearly defined, the alignment between this project and the company’s goals weren’t clearly aligned, there wasn’t a well-defined leadership and reporting structure in the project, or, there weren’t well-defined benefits to keep the budget from being given to someone else. To resolve this, get definitions! It might be too late (it should be done as early as possible in the project) but if a project is recently stalled, you might still have time to more clearly define the project to get it moving again.

Of course there are plenty of other reasons that projects might get stuck but I’ve found that these five are among the biggest. You’ll do well to mitigate these risks before they happen but if you ever find yourself in a situation where a project is already stuck, start here.

Good Luck!

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2. Santa: The Ultimate Project Management Guru
3. Project Management Gone Wrong

We laughed, of course, because no one really loves to do that kind of stuff. But it needs to get done and we know that putting away the leftovers and loading the dishwasher will take just a few minutes and will give us the entire evening to visit. And we can envision the annoyance if we didn’t do it now… later in the evening when we’re relaxed, NOBODY is going to want to load the dishwasher.

There’s some truth to that in project management. Actually, in all aspects of business. If you need to do a project (or sell some product or prepare for a conference or build a website or generate leads) then do the hardest thing first.

Do the hardest thing first. That’s it. It’s not a pleasant way to start the project. But it gets that part out of the way and gets the ball rolling. It also generates a certain amount of critical mass which is an important element in project management.

There’s a similar concept in sales. If your conversion rate is 10%, then you have to hear nine “no’s” before you hear that tenth reply “yes”. Salespeople who adopt that mindset don’t find “no” so troubling anymore because they count it as one of their nine and move on, expecting to get through eight more “no’s” before they are statistically likely to hear “yes”. In a sense, that “no” becomes a goal. It’s similar to the concept of doing the hardest thing first because it sets up the rest of the project for enjoyable success.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I would warn you: Choosing to do the easy and fun part of the project first and leaving the more difficult parts to the end is one type of problem that this advice is meant to overcome. But it can cause procrastination. After all, if we’re already reluctant to start a project, we may be even more reluctant to start by doing the worst part!

So it might seem like you’re trading one challenge for another. And in some projects, it’s simply not practical to do the hardest thing first (because, for example, there might be other steps that are required prior to that hardest part). But if you can fight procrastination, do the hardest thing first and the rest of the project will feel like a dream.

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In those everyday life management situations, procrastination is a common failing. New Years Resolutions (or any-time-of-year resolutions, for that matter) are delayed because of procrastination. New projects, unloved assignments, annoying chores… they all stack up because of it. Unfortunately, the world of business is not free from procrastination. Quite the opposite! People delay starting projects all the time. In fact, as a project manager, I’m brought in to situations that have often been pushed further and further back because of procrastination.

So, how do we solve it?

First, it’s important to know that procrastination is a symptom, not a cause. Identifying the cause of procrastination can help to end it. Are you procrastinating because you’re busy with so many other things? (In fact, it’s probably easy for many of us to say that we’re NOT procrastinating, we’re just too busy with other things!!!). Are you procrastinating because the project seems overwhelming? Are you procrastinating because the project is not really something you’re interested in doing?

Once you’ve identified the cause of procrastination, you need to address it. That seems obvious but it’s rarely done. Addressing that procrastination takes two forms:

1. Negating the reasons that you haven’t started. For example, if the project seems overwhelming, why not break it down into ridiculously minuscule chunks.

2. Starting. Yes, starting. Set aside 15 minutes and just begin. At the end of 15 minutes, stop. You might not have gotten very far but at least you’ve started and that helps to break the procrastination cycle.

Bonus Tip: If you’re wondering why you need to break down your project into ridiculously minuscule chunks here are two reasons: First, to create a list of tasks that are made up things that you might think “I’d be silly not do that right now”. (One example might be: “Move stapler to the table”). And second, to create several consecutive “wins” by accomplishing a bunch of easy tasks all at once.

Bonus Tip 2: I find two resources particularly helpful in order to track tasks and goals:

• The Printable CEO Series
• Tracking your #dailygoals with the hashtag on twitter and network with like minded individuals at www.trackdailygoals.com

Wishing Best Success,

Heather Villa

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