From the course: Time Management Tips

Use your calendar to stop procrastination

From the course: Time Management Tips

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Use your calendar to stop procrastination

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- Your calendar can be a helpful tool in fighting negative procrastination. I had a client once who said, "If it weren't for the last minute, "I'd never get anything done." That's procrastination in a nutshell. Instead, we want to flip that around and say, "If it weren't for the first minute, "we'd never get anything done." I call this pre-crastination. Pre-crastination is when you focus on just the starting minute of activity. Think about some big project that you need to do, like creating a training program for a new employee. That's a big, messy, hard project. Instead of getting bogged down in the negative emotions associated with that task, we can ask: What's the first minute of activity to accomplish that thing? Typically, the first minute will be something very simple like opening a file on a computer. Because there's no emotion tied to that, it's easy to do. So, when scheduling time to work on a task, no matter how long it may take to complete, schedule a note in the subject of the appointment that says, "1st: open the file on the computer." You can also use the description or notes section of an appointment to answer the why question, as in, "Why am I doing this?" This gives your mind a justification for the effort required. So, using that example of creating a training program, the reason why might be that it's going to save you lots of time in the future. Put that in the notes. Use the calendar to describe the first minute of activity and the reason why you're performing a task. This will make it easier for you to move past the emotion of negative procrastination.

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