Beating Procrastination
It's the bane of many home-based businesspeople…the temptation to put off tasks and projects that you either don't want to do or that are so large they seem impossible to accomplish. Perhaps it's the intimidation factor of the blank page that's putting you off or simply that you dislike bookkeeping so much that you'd rather clean your office than sit down with the growing pile of receipts — but the result is the same. You end up facing an urgent deadline because you delayed starting the project in the first place.
You will need to balance your to-do lists with what's actually achievable by one person in one day. If there aren't enough productive hours in the day to complete all the tasks that you've listed, it's very easy to become “paralyzed” — also known as the “deer-in-the-headlights” look.
You need to figure out what's really going on. Are you having a hard time starting, for example? Are your thoughts distracted by all of the chores that are waiting for you? Are you so fatigued by a long stretch of extreme work hours that your brain is looking for a break? Establishing what the problem is will help you figure out what the solution is.
If it's all the household chores (or the fridge or the television), set yourself some ground rules, e.g., no chores or even on turning the television news until a certain time of the day or until a certain number of tasks are completed. Take a thermal carafe of coffee or tea into the office so that you have no excuse to wander the house. If you can't be trusted to limit your time on computer games, remove them completely from your home office computer.
Conversely, try establishing a reward system if you'll respond better to positive reinforcement. One or two hours spent focusing on work gives you half an hour to take a walk or make yourself a (healthy) snack.
In a similar vein, make sure that your office is somewhere that you actually want to be. If it's down in a dingy basement or it's a cramped, awkward space, its physical location could be the problem. If you can't move it, try redecorating it. Use a small stereo so that you can play music that will raise your energy levels and even light aromatherapy candles if that will help — anything that will make you happy to be at your desk.
Try this antiprocrastination trick: Convince yourself to sit down and focus on the task for just fifteen minutes. That's all you're asking of yourself — just a quarter of an hour. You'll find that it gives you enough of a start on the project that you'll likely want to continue.
