My name is Rahul and I was a big procrastinator myself. Well, to be frank, I still am, but I have reduced my procrastination levels to a minimum now.
You see procrastination is like gravity, a little push and you will find yourself in a never ending mood of doing nothing but waste your valuable time. We are surrounded by distractions and no wonder we find ourselves refreshing our Facebook feed so often rather than doing things that actually matter in our life and will make our life better.
Procrastination is the root of many problems in our life. We all have a variety of things to do each day, and not doing those things on time leads to failure of meeting our goals and builds up stress on our minds which leads to several health problems.
So, what if instead of procrastinating when we should be doing our work, we actually complete the work and then find some time to enjoy the different spices in our lives like spending quality time with our families and friends, go on a tour, maybe watch that new movie or do other things which we long for.
Well, this isn't going to be easy but will definitely be worth the shot.
According to task and time management experts like Brian Tracy one of the best ways to fight procrastination is to chalk out a list of things you need to do for the day right at the beginning of your day.
This is it? What’s the big deal about it?
There’s only one catch in that technique. Just jotting down the things you need to do on a piece of paper won’t help. You need to sort out your tasks too based on their urgency and priority, commonly known as the ABC Technique of Time Management.
So basically the first step to overcoming procrastination will lead to procrastination itself, as sorting out the list will take time and work, and who has the time to do all that now-a-days. We all are busy folks running here and there in our busy lifestyle.
Thankfully, there’s an app for solving this problem, and its called Ledo.
Currently Ledo is only available for Android devices, so if you aren't using any Android device, sorry but you will have to do the dirty job all by yourself at the moment.
How to sort your To Do List with Ledo?
Actually its pretty much easy and comfortable.
Just download the Ledo app from Google Play on your Android device (phone or tablet) and fire it up.
You will see a white text box saying “I want to”. This is where you will add your things to do.
So, just type in what you need to do and by the time you need to do it like you would write if it was a piece of paper. Let’s say,
Prepare the Presentation Slides by 5:30 pm
Pick up Jamie from School at 3 pm
Party with friends at 9:30 pm
Flight to London tomorrow at 10:25 am
Another thing which this app needs is that you give each task a priority or importance on a scale of 1–5 increasing from 1 towards 5. Remember the ABC Technique? It requires an importance for each task right?
That’s all folks!
Now you can concentrate on things that you need to do and Ledo will automagically sort out your tasks and guide you throughout the day through notifications and automatic reminders.
You can see which task you need to do right now on the notifications section of your Android device and also how much time you have left to complete that task.
What if you are busy and totally forget that you have to go somewhere or do something at a particular time?
You need not worry about that, Ledo will remind you 30 mins early that you have to do that task.
If procrastination is a disease, Ledo is the cure.
Now that you have taken the first step to beat procrastination its time to do all the things that you need to do in the order the app suggests and stop spending time on doing other unnecessary stuff such as checking your Facebook news feed every 10 mins or so.
I know you might feel tempted to do the easy and interesting tasks at first and postpone the difficult tasks for later, but the tasks which are tough and important will actually make a difference in your life and will also give you a sense of satisfaction when completed. Try it yourself!
Believe me if you have a mountain of pending works waiting for you, it will surely affect the balance of your life. So, its a good practice to complete your tasks right on time so that you can enjoy your life.
Don’t get burdened by the list of things you need to do everyday, strike them off your list like a superhero and make time to be the real you, you want to be.
You don’t get a life twice, stop procrastinating and start making this life grand.
Cheers!
Image Credit: A-PA