5 Tips to Overcome Procrastination and Live a Productive Life

The life we live is one of the reasons that push us to procrastinate. We hear a lot of information, are exposed to many distractions, and have many opportunities. This huge amount of events causes us to lack clarity in vision and weakens our ability to focus.

When our focus is not at its highest, the chances of getting the job done entirely decrease, but everyone knows that if you want to succeed in life, there is only one way to do it: to work.

We waste our precious time on unhelpful tasks

You may scold yourself for a moment that this is your fault. You exhaust yourself in vain when you start things and then do not accomplish them, and because you do not invest your life in the right way, this is not entirely your fault. Procrastination is not a problem of the times; it is as old as human civilization.

The Greek poet Hesiod talks about procrastination in a poem he wrote in the eighth century BC in which he says: “Do not put your work off till tomorrow and the day after, for a sluggish worker, does not fill his barn, nor one who puts off his work: industry makes work go well, but a man who puts off work is always at hand-grips with ruin.” This quote dates back centuries, which means that our behavior has not changed much, and this fact does not need much thought.

The only solution to overcome procrastination is to have a system that helps you do so. Otherwise, you will never succeed. Continuing to procrastinate is your fault because you do not have a system to overcome procrastination. The system we are talking about is only a dynamic means to help you achieve your goals; it will not work on your behalf, but it will give you the framework you need to stay productive continuously and daily.

These tips will help you have the system to overcome procrastination:

1. Have the right mindset and train your brain.
2. Improve your health because you won't have the energy to be productive without good health.
3. Apply techniques to eliminate procrastination and improve your concentration.
4. Improve the quality of the results you get during your day after you have improved your concentration.
5. Have Persuasion Skills. Indeed, your skill in accomplishing work is more important than anything. Still, you cannot make others notice your achievements without persuasion skills, so persuasion helps you accomplish your work.

You must maintain order when applying these tips. Otherwise, you will not get the desired result. For example, start using advice No. 4, which includes improving your productivity to improve daily results. You will not achieve success in the long term because these successes are useless in terms of productivity as long as you are exhausted and distracted and feel a lack of focus.

Therefore, you should strive to live a life full of productivity to achieve your goals. For example, you may be a person with very great potential, but you are not good at communicating with others, and this, of course, prevents you from achieving success to achieve the desired benefit.

We will provide examples of how to optimize each of these tips, mentioning the importance of this advice. For  instance, in tip 1, we will explain the importance of having psychological strength to succeed. We will support these essential tips with sub-tips immediately applicable in daily life.

Technology has made our lives easier

This is relatively true, but it has also made it difficult to complete tasks. The sources of distraction are widespread wherever you go and prevent you from achieving your work. Completing work with an entire focus is difficult now, but it is rare.

Otherwise, everyone in this life would have been successful. So, if you follow these tips, you will become more effective in completing the work, which are tried and successful tips:

1. Avoid overthinking

Action movie star and Kung Fu champion Bruce Lee says, “If you think about doing too much, you'll never do it.”

The first step to living a life full of productivity is to train your mind. Without the right mindset and self-awareness, it will be impossible to accomplish anything in life. You may want to achieve many things in life, but it does not depend on mere desire, especially when your thinking style does not help you achieve what you want. Your thoughts are your only enemy, but you can overcome them if you learn to use your mind instead of letting it control you.

Practical Tip: Keep a record of the activities you want to do

We hear many complain about their inability to get rid of procrastination, but this is not surprising if we know that most people do not know how to invest their time and lives.

If you do not understand what things are wasting your time, you will not know yourself, and if you do not know yourself, you will not be able to get rid of procrastination and improve your productivity. You can own a journal or use one of the task-scheduling applications; this record must remain at your fingertips. Thus, you know how to behave in your daily life.

2. Stay physically healthy

We must maintain our physical health. Otherwise, we will not be able to maintain the health and safety of our minds. You can set goals in your life and create the right programs, just like you can live without goals; perhaps your goal is limited to being a good partner, and you want to make enough money to live a comfortable life.

The role of health in achieving goals is that it ensures that we get enough energy to achieve what we want. Otherwise, we will never be able to achieve anything. It is also necessary to take care of the body and mind, the two basic pillars to overcome procrastination.

It does not require super intelligence to realize the importance of this balance. Everyone knows it is an axiom, but we simply do not apply this intuitive knowledge.

It is about consciously living our lives. Moreover, the brain and body support each other. Exercising improves blood flow to the brain, making it easier for the brain to function. Exercise stimulates the production of a hormone known as a brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which is the hormone responsible for brain growth.

This hormone helps produce new cells in the brain and also promotes communication between neurons in the brain structure.

Practical Tip: Get plenty of sleep, eat healthy, and exercise daily.

Getting healthy is not complicated, but they convince us that it is tough to continue making this area a business that earns millions of dollars. We do not see an advertisement on television advising us to get enough sleep and eat healthy food to improve our immune systems.

Still, we see a lot of advertisements for products, tools, and diets that promise us to achieve the same results we get from sleep, healthy food, and daily exercise because, in this case, they will not make money if they tell you that you only need sleep, sports, and healthy food.

Here are some tips to help you get fit:

2.1. Walk as much as you can

We often get in the car or take public transport even when we can walk. Walking has fantastic benefits that make you want to practice it even if you do not need to move. So, you can walk to activate your muscles and blood circulation any time you want. Lunch break is an excellent time for that; no matter how you do it, committing to walking daily for 30 minutes is essential.

2.2. Do a physical activity every 30 minutes

When the alarm goes off after 25 minutes of work, take a walk or stretch during your 5-minute break.

2.3. Calculate how many calories you get and how much you consume during your daily activity

Calculate how many calories you eat during the workweek, how many calories you consume, and how many calories your body needs.

You can use applications such as Myfitnesspal, or walking applications to measure calories consumed. Using these applications, you will know the distance you walk and how much food you should eat during a normal day.

2.4. Make exercise a daily habit

It is easier to do something daily than two or three times a week, and this rule also applies to exercise. When you make it a habit to go to the gym at the same time every day, exercise becomes an activity that you do automatically.

When you get used to going to the gym daily after work and commit to exercise for a specific period, this habit will become one of the things you plan carefully, so try to exercise daily during the work week and make exercise on the weekends optional.

2.5. Create a daily training routine that you enjoy

Doing the same thing every day is boring and not productive, as the typical weekly training program has three types of exercises, and in order not to get bored, switch between these three types:

• Strength training, such as weightlifting, rowing, climbing, and other exercises that require strength.
• Intermittent training: High-intensity intermittent training improves the overall physical condition and promotes metabolism.
• Flexibility exercises: such as yoga or traditional stretching exercises.

You have to make training fun; otherwise, you won't keep up. Choose the kind you like and challenge yourself to a daily achievement.

3. Improve your focus

The late American journalist Hunter S. Thompson once said, "A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”

After becoming fit physically and enjoying good mental and physical health, you should work to improve your focus and overcome continuous distractions. Contemporary life is full of opportunities, and you can do a lot easier than you imagine:

• You can read any book you want.
• You can send a message to anyone you know.
• You can listen to your favorite music.
• You can watch funny videos.

All these and other wonderful things are within reach, but one problem with this abundance of options is that every time you do something aimlessly, you become distracted, and willpower won't help you stop this distraction.

We all know how cheerful you feel when you open the Facebook app. After a while, you feel resentful and try to ease your frustration by eating unhealthy food. It means we procrastinate when we don't know how to invest our time or when we're afraid to do what we think is right, so when you know what you want to do and then do it without hesitation, you won't have a chance to procrastinate at all.

Therefore, most of us succeed in working when we are given deadlines or when someone asks us to do something, while everything in our personal lives lacks this obligation. Many of us deal with time as an inexhaustible resource, but this is not true because life is limited and human life is short.

Practical advice: Take care of your morning habits because they set the whole day's rhythm. They are necessary to improve concentration and give you enough time to think about what you want to do during the day.

When you have good morning habits, you will be able to improve your concentration, which will make it easier for you to accomplish more things during the day, and at the end of the day, you will realize that you have accomplished a lot.

4. Improve your productivity

Productivity  is the ability to do something one has never done before; it is limited to effectiveness. So, responding to 100 emails in an hour is not a kind of productivity; it is effective, and most of us do not know the difference between them.

Productivity does not necessarily mean that you are doing a lot of work. You may be very busy, but all the tasks you accomplish do not help to improve your professional or personal life. So, what matters are the results and not how much work you do.

The correct definition of productivity is to do the work with high returns in the least possible time; that is, if you work for 50 hours a week without any personal, emotional, or financial development, you have never been productive during this week.

Practical advice: Divide the work into periods with no interruptions.

Focusing on one task is the best advice to increase productivity. Still, provided that you keep your focus without being interrupted by distractions, and to avoid losing focus due to distractions, accomplish the task intermittently, which is known as the tomato technique. It may seem a simple technique, but mastering it requires much time and effort.

5. Improve your ability to persuade

The late American journalist Edward R. Edward R. Murrow said, “To be persuasive, we must be believable. To be believable, we must be credible. To be credible, we must be truthful.”

People play an essential role in our lives, yet no one has taught us how to communicate with others effectively. It is not common to be given lessons about dealing with people, perhaps because we assume that our knowledge is all-inclusive.

But this belief is wrong. Understanding people is more complicated than it seems; it is even impossible to understand everything related to man itself. We must learn the basics of communication with others if we want to achieve any goal in life.

One of the best books in this area is by the writer Dale Carnegie, entitled How To Win Friends And Influence People. Although the book was published in 1937, it is still a reference for relationships to this day, so everyone must read it. Here are some tips from this book:

• Do not criticize others.
• Show your appreciation to others in an honest manner.
• Consider the other person's desire and reconcile it with your own.

Also, here are some good traits that, if we have them, increase our ability to influence others:

• Attention: Show others your sincere interest in them.
• Positive mindset: Smile, make a positive impact on others, and be funny.
• Listen: Do not interrupt others.
• Respect: Treat others as you would like to be treated.

The Influence here is not meant to manipulate others but to convey your message correctly to the right people. You should know that you cannot influence others in any circumstance without possessing the necessary talent; it is not magic.

The main thing you must commit to is credibility in dealing with others and in your work and being honest, but at the same time, you must realize the correct way to market your product, introduce yourself, and offer services that achieve your goals.

Practical Tip: Start the email in the addressee style.

This advice will significantly enhance the interaction of others with your email, and the secret is that people love themselves. When you send an email using the style of the addressee, they are curious to see it, for example:

• If you want to ask someone for feedback, write: “I want your feedback on a topic like this.”
• Use an addressee style if you want to take a chance to talk about someone's company, such as your company, your strategy, and so on.
• If you want to ask your friend to drive you, tell them, “Your car is great,” and so on.
• Don't talk about yourself; you're texting the other person to ask for something, so make it the focus of the conversation.

Here are two tips to increase your chances of getting a response to your emails:

5.1. Keep messages brief and free of gossip

People don't like to reply to long messages. So, delete the first line of your message, which often includes phrases like “How are you?” Etc ., and get straight to the point.

5.2. Ask for something specific

Don't use open-ended questions like, “Tell me what you think” or “How's your schedule?” These questions reduce the effectiveness of your communication with others, shorten the e-mail message, and get to the heart of the matter. If you want to meet someone, suggest two dates and allow them to choose between them.

If you want feedback from someone, determine precisely the subject on which you request this feed, and do not insist on the same subject by sending the same message several times, whether to set an appointment or clarify something.

You can apply these tips to various forms of communication: emailing friends, selling products, asking for media interviews, and you'll find that they lead to responses being received less often and faster.

In conclusion

Some people may wonder, why look for increased productivity? The answer is that a productive life means a meaningful life and a meaningful life means a happy life. Life is long, so we must be careful about what we make now because it affects our future.

This doesn't mean you must live in the future; it means being realistic. If you hate your job and don't dare to leave it, you become cynical; this destroys your relationships. You may end up alone after others shake off. Studies show that lonely people die earlier than people around them.

What you do today affects your life 10, 20, or even 50 years from now; as the Stoic philosopher Seneca once said: “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested."