Productive, Successful YOU! 5 Strategies to Stress-Bust Procrastination

Now that February has just rolled around the corner, how many of you are still sticking to those New Year resolutions? Perhaps your goal was to eat healthier and exercise more? Or maybe it was to check-off more of the things from your to-do list? Whatever you were aiming for, keep in mind that anytime you set out to accomplish something that doesn’t get done only adds stress and anxiety to your mental health. To avoid procrastinating habits and the negative thinking traps that ensue, you must set realistic goals that are visibly reachable. How, you ask?
Here are 5 strategies to become more productive, so you can successfully achieve your goals and decrease your stress factor.

1) Make Use of Stress & Anxiety
When you’re under stress and feeling anxious, what you’re experiencing is your body’s natural fight-or-flight response at work. Depending on how you interpret it, this adrenaline rush can either be your friend or foe. Instead of perceiving this added energy as anxiety and feeling crippled by it, make the adrenaline rush work for you by utilizing it to tackle your tasks.
2) Identify Mental Thought Traps
If you’re beating yourself up, then you are only creating unnecessary anxiety and stress. Mental thought traps are basically negative self-talk that causes havoc to your emotional and physical health. It doesn’t help your motivation or drive to make such comments as, “I’m just too busy to exercise” or “I’ll never finish this in time.” Instead, identify these thinking traps and correct them, so they can’t hold you prisoner to procrastination.
3) Break Mountains into Molehills
Many people know what they want to achieve, yet they have no plan of attack. Other people are crippled by mountainous missions in which the path toward the end result becomes buried and lost. Either way, instead of perceiving a task as a vague, ginormous mountain, break it down into smaller, well-defined goals that can be easily reached. Develop a realistic blueprint for each step of the journey by planning backward from the end goal. Determine each sequential step and the timeframes needed for each step. Without this basic roadmap, you will likely get lost along the way and lose sight of the end objective.
4) Schedule Accordingly
Now that you have a basic blueprint, the next step is to actually plan and schedule each agenda that will advance you to task completion. This means scheduling even the most mundane tasks, such as cleaning the kitchen or running errands. Scheduling may initially seem tedious and like added work. However, with 1,440 minutes in a day and 168 hours in a week, there is just too much time to procrastinate while telling yourself, “It can wait” or “I’ll do it later.” Before you know it, a week has slipped by without progress toward your goal. Alas at this point, your mental thought traps will remind you of this fact, and add further undue stress and anxiety to your livelihood.
5) Visualize Success
Take 10 – 15 minutes each morning to visualize your day’s agendas. See yourself engaging in each task, and especially, completing each molehill as you reach the final destination. Feel the sensation of success as you visualize accomplishing each goal. The feeling of achievement enhances an “I can” attitude that will increase your motivation and drive to actually carrying out each agenda. In fact, many athletes train through visualizations to improve their performances. When you visualize success, it becomes more attainable simply because your mind believes it. Essentially, this is your mental rehearsal at work. Use it often!
Similar to any new skill, each of these strategies will only become innate through repeated practice. Use these tools regularly to jump hurdles and reach your finish line. As you experience less stress from procrastination, congratulate yourself for the improved, successful you.
For more on breaking free from stress, anxiety, and procrastination, and creating a personal action plan to reach your fullest potential, check out Dr. Yip’s new book:
“Productive, Successful You! End Procrastination by Making Anxiety Work for You Rather Than Against You.”
For more details, visit: www.DrYip.com/books/