Employers agree: time management skills are among the top priorities for success. And yet, this remains a struggle many people who work on multiple, pressing projects. What do you focus on first when everything stands out as important? How much time have you spend re-organizing your to-do list, only to find yourself still lacking direction?
Without a strong plan of action, the effort to get organized becomes its own form of procrastination – and we all know what procrastination does to productivity!
It’s time to stop organizing your organizing and start getting things done.
Here are five tips for moving past organization procrastination and getting to work. You can start right now.
- Turn off your countless alerts. Until you have your To Do items prioritized properly, constant notifications only serve as a distraction. Shut them off and get back to work!
- Ignore your current To Do list. Resist the temptation to rearrange the tasks you have written down, which may include many menial tasks that don’t need to be done right now. Take a deep breath and think about what is actually most pressing, and get to work on that. Once you finish, you can give your to-do list another look.
- Think about this: if it’s urgent, it’s probably on your mind, taking up energy and causing you stress. That’s because you should get it done first. Write down the three things that are most pressing in your schedule. Complete them now.
- Schedule. Of course it’s important not to let important tasks slip your mind by not keeping track of them, but this doesn’t mean that your to-do list should be reanalyzed and rearranged every time something new comes up. To avoid this temptation, schedule a defined amount of time each day to put your ideas in order. When your timer hits 0:00, get to work.
- Take a short break. Studies show that working long hours without any down time is actually bad for productivity; some of us spend up to hours a day semi-focused because our minds burn out over the course of the work day. Get up, drink a glass of water, and take a quick stretch. You’ll work better when you get back to your desk.
Finally, Priority Matrix can help you and your company take procrastination out of organization. Using the ingenious Eisenhower four-quadrant method to organize tasks, Priority Matrix allows you to quickly organize your priorities on your computer, phone, or tablet with a user-friendly interface. You can even share projects with your co-workers, quickly delegate tasks, and sync the app to your email and calendar. Not only does this get you organized; it keeps you from losing tasks.
It’s time to move beyond the hidden procrastination of organizing your organizing.