Beat Procrastination When You are Over Committed at Work

Beat procrastination when you are over committed at work.

Are you hard worker, always putting your hand up for the things that have to get done for you or your team to complete their goals? Does this sound like you?

Often these dedicated people make great employees who take on added responsibilities and commitments overloading their schedules before knowing how they are going to get the work done. Because they are over committed, they often are pushing to get things done on time.

Consider this regular occurrence:

Often Jake is the first to put his hand up when things need to get done. When the boss asks for a report to be done, most of the other employees slink into the background, knowing Jake will take the job.

Jake is the employee that every boss wants, somebody who is willing and motivated to step up and take responsibility and get the task done.

Jake often does great work; the problem is that it is never done on time. Jake often commits to tasks and responsibilities before figuring out how he will do them.

In short, Jake is overwhelmed with work.

Often very dedicated and enthusiastic people have trouble saying no, and take on far more commitments at home or at work. While there the desire and motivation is fantastic, it is not possible to do everything at once. Often being over committed can lead to poorer quality of work and family life.

If you have trouble saying no and as a result have a crazily overloaded schedule, then a couple of things could help.

• Resist the urge. Before putting your hand up again to take on new responsibility pause for a moment to consider your schedule and how this new responsibility will fit into your schedule.
• Remember the 80/20 rule. This is the rule that 20 percent of your actions contribute to 80 percent of your output. This means that the other 80 percent of your actions do not have much impact. So focus your effort on the 20 percent that are important and matter, and make sure that you do this in your most productive period of time. Your most productive part of the day can be found using your free downloadable time log.
• Learn to say no. Often in the short term it is easier to say yes, rather than no. Saying ‘no’ has the long term advantage of allowing you to concentrate on things that are important to you. In the example above, Jake looks good to his boss in the short term, but this is likely to be short-lived when he is unable to get the report in on time and lets his team down.

Saying no can be a very difficult thing to say when you are dedicated and enthusiastic about what you are doing, but often a well-formed response as to ‘why’ you are unable to do the task and that you cannot focus on your priorities can help. If it is your boss that you are saying ‘no’ to, then take time out and think about the things you are currently doing, and then meet with your boss to prioritize your projects and their anticipated time lines

Knowing the causes of procrastination helps you to beat procrastination.

Do you avoid those unpleasant tasks - you know, the ones that you have to do? If so, then overcome procrastination with these tips.

Are you overwhelmed at work? If this is causing you to procrastinate, then beat procrastination with time management.

Are unclear goals stopping you from making a decision. Beat procrastination with these goal setting strategies.

Putting things off to the last minute may mean that you are addicted to the adrenalin rush this gives you. Leaving things do the last minute often causes stress and a lower quality of output. These solutions can break this procrastination habit.

Do you have fear of failure and is this stopping you from living to your potential? If so, then try this to conquer your fear of failure.

Do you put off doing tasks because you have a fear of change. If so, then try this to conquer your fear of change.



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