Procrastination to progress: Boost your productivity and achieve your goals
Procrastination is the action of delaying or postponing a task. It is a common challenge one faces while managing a team. It generally feels like a quick way to escape stress or discomfort, but in reality, it affects productivity and work progress. The main reasons behind procrastination are fear of failure, lack of motivation, unclear goals, low morale, etc.
Being CEO of ProofHub for 12+ years, I’ve learned that procrastination is common.
In this blog, I will be sharing my personal strategies for dealing with procrastination at the workplace. These tactics are proven methods that can help you overcome procrastination and build momentum to achieve your goals. Let’s deal with it:
Read more: Six Foolproof Tips For Leaders To Develop A Positive Attitude (and maintain it)
Understanding the causes of procrastination
The root causes of procrastination stem from various factors from less team morale to not guiding your staff well. Here are some major causes:
- Fear of failure
The fear of failure is a significant reason behind the team’s procrastination. Employees who believe they might fail don’t attempt the assigned task, resulting in delays. This fear may stem from low self-esteem and fears of negative repercussions.
- Perfectionism
Perfectionism often leads to high expectations towards the goal, leading to task completion delays. The fear of not satisfying the goals causes employees to procrastinate their work. It affects overall work efficiency.
- Lack of motivation
Procrastination also stems from employees’ lack of motivation. Employees who don’t feel excited and interested in doing a task generally procrastinate. Lack of motivation is caused by work boredom and a lack of value for the task.
- Overwhelm
Assigning various tasks can cause teams to procrastinate. When an employee is delegated with bundles of work to do, they find it complex to complete. It causes not completing the tasks on time. In this case, learning effective task delegation can help deal with procrastination effectively.
- Poor time management
When teams don’t effectively plan their time, they get overwhelmed by the number of work to do, which leads to a sense of panic and avoidance of performing their duties.
- Distractions
Consistent notifications, phone calls, and emails are the distractions that cause people to put off their work. These distractions create hurdles when employees want to focus on their tasks.
- Lack of clear goals
If employees don’t know what to achieve, then they will always find a task hard to start. Without defining a clear goal, employees work without an aim. It creates conditions of task burnout and procrastination.
How to overcome procrastination to achieve desired goals
Not taking timely action on procrastination can become a huge problem for your team. Here are some ways to overcome:
- Identify the gap
The first step to eradicating procrastination is to identify it clearly. Know why your team is procrastinating. Is it a lack of motivation, work burden, task monotony, decreased morale, or something else? Prepare a list by observing your team’s performance keenly.
Also explore: Monotony could kill your team. Here’s why you need to shake it up!
- Setting clear and achievable goals
Start subdividing the team’s goal into achievable sub-targets. Simpler and divided objectives will allow you to measure progress. Clarify all your expectations and project-related goals to your team. It will help your team to strategize their work and perform with full potential.
- Apply time management tactics
Applying a time management tactic will let your team organize their tasks better. Try methods like:
- Time blocking: It lets you set a specific time for a particular task during working hours.
- Pomodoro technique: Organize work and perform it in planned 25-minute intervals followed by 5 minutes of short breaks. It helps build work engagement and build momentum to reach your goals.
- Eisenhower matrix: This means that the tasks need to be sorted out according to how urgent they are and how important they are at a particular period.
- Learn effective delegation
It requires identifying the expertise of your team and assigning tasks. This approach allows team members to acquire tasks on which they can work to their full potential. Thus, the right task will be in the right hand that will overcome procrastination.
- Monitor progress
Regularly monitor the task progress of delegated tasks. Find out if there’s any challenge your team is facing and provide a solution. This will keep your team engaged towards the work and help mitigate procrastination issues.
To make project planning and task delegation easy, try ProofHub, which has top-tier features to let you monitor team progress, effectively delegation, manage deadlines, and deal with procrastination effectively.
- Accountability
To tackle procrastination, take complete accountability of your team. Clearly communicate your visions to your team. Set a specific deadline to keep everyone focused. Consider offering a reward to motivate everyone. Use reminders like alarms or calendar events to stay on track. Minimize distractions by creating a focused workspace. This might mean limiting the use of social media apps, using headphones, or limiting email time. In the end, be determined to overcome procrastination and stay productive.
Bottom line
Procrastination is perhaps the most common vice that is commonly displayed in workplaces, which often leads to decreased productivity and failure to deliver on set targets. In order to be able to deal with this issue appropriately, you should ensure that there is motivation, ownership of responsibilities and goal orientation. Using time management strategies, effective delegation, feedback and success stories, leaders could help employees to conquer procrastination and become more productive.
Furthermore, it is essential to understand the root causes of procrastination which includes fear of failure, perfectionism, and low motivation. Thus, utilizing the measures described in this blog, managers can prevent the detrimental effects of procrastination and increase organizational productivity.
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