In short procrastination is a habit if you will, a very bad habit, that consists in putting off something for the next day. Procrastination is to blame for most of our productivity problems and yet it seems that very few people actually do something about it. And this doesn’t solely apply to your personal life either, it just as well happens in your career as well, because chances have it you’ll behave the same way at work as well. Missed opportunities, frenzied work hours, stress, overwhelm, resentment, and guilt are just a few consequences.

I’m pretty sure most of you’ve told yourselves at least once in your life I’ll do it tomorrow, I have the time or tomorrow’s another day. Ok, that’s true, but to paraphrase a common proverb, why put put for tomorrow, what you can do today? It’s safe to say that everybody knows that procrastination is hazardous, but what compels people, like you or myself, to do it? There’s a few reasons why people result to postponements like fear of the unknown, fear of change, perfectionism, fear of failure, disorganization and so on, but probably the most common reason is … laziness. That’s right folks laziness can really be a bugger, some go as far as saying it’s a terrible sickness, I personally think it’s all just a psychological issue.

The key to overcoming procrastination is inner strength, inner strength to motivate ourself on completing a task no matter how big or small it is. However most of us lack a particular strength in character and get sucked away from our goals and plans. Do not despair though there are ways to help pass procrastination and eventually get things done.

1. Take It One Step At a Time

Some tasks, at first glance, may seem simply overwhelming or require a Herculean amount of effort, so in term we don’t do anything, at all. It’s important not to let yourself discouraged by any particular amount of work or pressure involved in an activity; what you need to do is start off slow, in small baby steps, in a revere pyramid style and you’ll soon find that things are actually beginning to shape up. For example the other week, I went in with my dad in the garage to clean up the place. There were wrenches, old car oil stench, used car parts, an old refrigerator, a broken TV and a bunch of other useless crap lying all over the place. I didn’t even know where to start from and it all seem like it was gonna take for ever to clean up the mess. My dad soon approached me and told me “there’s no hurry son, there’s no pressure, we’ll just take it one step at a time and see where we get.” We started off with the floor, then with the stocked up drawers and went to more and more difficult task from there on, until around midnight we finally finished. My garage never looked cleaner. This is not only a methodical technique of getting things done, but also a provider or motivation.

2. You Don’t Need To “Have To,” You Need To “Want To”

If you feel like you “have to” do something you’ll automatically feel a sense of restrainment and negativity, that comes naturally when we’re feeling obliged to do something. This leads to some serious procrastination issues and is most encountered at work. The solution here is to shift your mindset from “have to” to “want to.”Be a firm believer that if you don’t want to do something, then you don’t have to. Simple as that. This might of course have some serious consequences, like loosing your job for instance (in the most extreme cases), but if manage to master the art of avoiding unwanted activities, you won’t have any trouble. There are some unpleasant tasks that we can’t avoid, like work for some (I never could understand why some people would choose to make their living in a field of activity they displease), but even then we can avoid procrastination by tricking our brain. You can do this by finding anything remotely pleasant about what you’re about to do, no matter how small and then think about it all the time, while you pursue the respective unpleasant task. This will cheat your brain into thinking you want to do it, not have to.

3. Brainstorm Your Way Out

A common reason for procrastination is lack of ideas, when dealing with any kind of tasks, that mildly requires some creativity. We’ve all had our days of mind blocks or plateaus, it’s actually fairly common, but if this period of blockage is too long, procrastination can settle in. What you need to do is brainstorm. Go outside have a walk and freshen up, observe and analyze everything you see or encounter. Always bring a ben/pencil or a PDA (for those of you more tech savvy) and start taking notes of what you see. Don’t criticize yourself, write down even the most preposterous ideas your mind might produce, you never know when something brilliant might come up.

4. Time Yourself

I’ve found that many people resort to procrastination because they have to much time on their hands and so they put off things for the next hour, day or even weeks. Go to your desk, grab an alarm timer and set it for 10 minutes, 30 minutes or whatever time you believe is necessary to complete your work. Be sure not to leave too much room though, in example this post in normal conditions might take me 2-3 hours to write, I’ve set my timer for 40 minutes. It’s still ticking. This will help you motivate yourself in completing your work, but also most importantly it will help you focus.

5. Eliminate All Other Distractions

This means no IM, TV, no e-mail, no internet whatsoever (unplugging your chord would be a good idea), no music (for those of you that find it distractive, I personally can work fine with music in my headphones) or anything remotely distractive, that might break your concentration. Anything that might come between you and whatever task your trying to fulfill may disrupt your current activities and thus lead to procrastination. It’s better to avoid this by eliminating anything that might cause you to suddenly abandon your work. However, be careful. Don’t over exaggerate with this and lock yourself from the outside world, from your family and people that care for you.

6. Stop Being A Perfectionist

Another cause of procrastination is perfectionism. It’s natural for us humans to try to be the best at something, but sometimes along the path we can tend to over-react with our ambitions and turn to perfectionism. This way we try complete a task flawlessly from the very beginning, but this takes a lot of work, that in term leads to a lot of stress, which in term leads to procrastination. This is because your brain will soon associate that stress with the respective task and will try to avoid it, most often by postponing it.

It’s important to understand that no one and nothing is perfect. It’s actually the imperfections that make the world around us so beautiful and most of all unique. You can try to write the most complete and helpful article ever or build the perfect software all you won’t, but you’ll never succeed, because there’ll always be room for improvement. Realize that an imperfect job completed today is always superior to the perfect job delayed indefinitely.

簡言之，拖拉就是一種習慣，一種壞習慣，把事情推托到以后干是它的主要特征。大多數關于工作效率的問題基本上可以歸咎于拖拉的毛病，但是很少人能夠對這種毛病實際的做一些努力。 這個毛病并不會只是影響你的個人生活，同樣會影響到你的事業，因為一旦有機會，這個毛病也會你在工作中表現出來。錯過機遇，加班加點，壓力，折磨，抱怨，內疚就是最終一連串的后果。

我相信大多數的人曾經在生活中不止一次的告訴自己：我明天再做它，我還有時間，或者是明天以后的某個時間。 OK，沒錯，但我要用一個諺語說明一下：為什么是明天，今天不行嗎？（why put put for tomorrow, what you can do today?） 我可以打保票的說，每個人都知道拖拉不好，那究竟是什么讓人們，就像你自己，去拖拉呢？有很多原因能導致人們去拖延事情，例如對未知事物的恐懼，害怕改變，完美主義，害怕失敗，混亂無序等等，但恐怕最常見的原因卻是 … 懶惰。確實如此，懶惰是個不好的毛病，有時候會發展成很嚴重的問題，我個人認為它完全是個心理上的問題。

克服拖拉毛病的關鍵是內在意志，用內在意志去激發自己完成一件事情，不管事情大還是小。 但我們大多數都在性格里缺乏這種意志，所以才導致我們離目標和計劃越來越遠。 不要沮喪，還是有方法能夠幫助我們去克服拖拉、最終讓我們完成我們的該做任務的。

1. 一點一點的做

有 些任務，乍一看，感覺是無法實現的，或是需要莫大的努力，于是就導致我們竟然就什么都沒做。我們千萬不要因為某些工作或壓力而氣餒，這很重要；我們處理它們的方法應該是逐漸啟動，就像小孩學走路時最初的那一小步，采用一種倒金字塔的方法，你很快就能發現事情正在實際的開始有雛形了。 例如，有一個周末，我跟爸爸一起走進車庫準備清掃這個地方。扳手，廢油，用過的汽車零件到處都是，一個舊冰箱，一個破損的電視，還有一堆其它沒用的廢物。我真是不知道如何下手，看起來這是個永遠不能完成的任務。爸爸很快走過來告訴我：“這里沒有什么要緊的事情，沒有什么要求，我們只需要每次做一點，然后看看我們都做完了什么。“我們從地板開始，然后是那些放東西的抽屜，然后其他越來越麻煩的事情，這樣，直到午夜，我們終于完成了。 我們的車庫前所未有的干凈。這不僅是一種做事情的技術方法學，也是為人父母和激勵人的方法學。

2. 沒有“必須做”，只有“想要做”

如 果有什么事情是你感覺是“必須”要做的，那么你會不由自主的產生一種消極抵觸的情緒，當你感到“被迫”要去做什么事情是自然會產生這種情緒。 這將會導致一些嚴重的拖拉問題，大部分發生在工作問題上。 解決這個問題的辦法是將“必須做”的思想傾向轉變成“想要做”。堅信如果你不想做什么事情，你就不必去做它。就這么簡單。當然，這也許會導致一些嚴重的后果，例如立即丟了你的工作（在極端的情況下），但是如果你能掌握如何躲避不想做的事情的藝術時，這種情況就不會發生。有些不令人高興的事情我們無法避免，例如替別人做事（我一直不明白為什么有些人要生活在他們不滿意的行業中），對于這種事情我們可以用欺騙自己的技巧來避免拖拉。 你可以在你將要做的任務中尋找任何值得你高興的方面，哪怕是一點點，然后你就一直想它，然后再去做那些不高興的任務。這種方法可以騙過你的心智，讓你覺得你想要去做它，而不是必須做。

3. 走出去想辦法

導致拖拉的一個常見的原因是沒有主意，特別是處理某些需要創造性想法的任務。 我們每人都有思路卡殼和暢通的時候，真是很常見，但是如果思路堵塞的時間太長，拖拉就會發生。 你現在需要做的是腦力激蕩。 出去走走，清理一下思想，注意觀察和分析你看到和碰到的任何事情。 拿著筆和本子或者一個PDA（這個需要你知道更多的技術知識），開始描述你看到的東西。 不要挑剔，寫下甚至是最荒唐的主意，只要是你想到的，因為你永遠不知道何時絕妙的想法會突然蹦出了。

4. 給自己定時

我 發現很多人拖拉的原因是因為他們有太多的時間，所以就可以把事情推托到下一小時，一天，甚至是一周。你應該走的辦公桌前，拿起鬧鐘，設定在10分鐘，30分鐘或其他你覺得你應該能完成你工作的時間。要確保不能留太多的余地，例如這篇文章在通常的情況下應該會讓我花費2-3小時完成，我就把鬧鐘設置成40分鐘鬧一次。 它現在仍然在走。這將幫助你激發自己去完成工作，更重要的事情是幫助你集中注意力。

5. 消除所有干擾

就是讓你關掉聊天工具，電視，不要收email，斷掉任何網絡（最好拔掉網線），關掉音樂（這是針對那些視音樂為干擾的人，對我有個人，我戴著耳麥聽音樂感覺良好）以及任何細小的干擾，任何能影響你注意力的事情。 任何能夠插入你和你計劃要完成的事情中間的事情都會中斷你現有的活動，導致拖拉的產生。 所以我們最好通過消除任何可能導致你突然終止工作的干擾因素來避免這種情況的發生。 然而，注意。 不要過分與世隔絕、與你的家人和關心你的人隔絕了。

6. 停止完美主義

另 外一個導致拖拉的因素是完美主義。 努力把事情做到最好是人的天性，但是有時候沿著這條思路我們會產生反應過度的企圖，變成了完美主義者。一開始我們就想著要把事情做的完美無缺，但這會需要很多的工作，最終導致很大的壓力，于是就導致了拖拉。這是因為你的大腦很快就能把這些任務和這些壓力聯系到一些，于是產生抵觸的意識，常見的做法就是推遲延期。

沒有完 美的人和事物，認識到這一點很重要。 正是因為這不完美才讓我們周圍這個世界變的如此美麗，如此各具特色。你可能會試圖寫一篇最完全的最有價值的文章或編寫一個最完美的軟件，但你永遠不會成功，因為什么事情都有可以再改進的空間。你要明白，今天完成的不完美的工作遠優于無限期拖延的完美的工作。