"Poor communication skills can
condemn you to a life of mediocrity and
frustration. Good communication skills
can unlock your dreams of success."
Dr. Robert A. Tracz

Procrastination

I don't know if it's because summer has been slow in arriving, but over the past few weeks I've had a tough time getting going. It seems as though I've had to force myself to do everything.

Take the back yard for example. It needs work. I know it but I haven't had the energy to do it. That is until my daughter decided she wanted to have a birthday party in the back yard . Now things are proceeding at the speed of light - nothing like a dead line to get you going.

Why can't we be more proactive? Why do we need a dead line to act. I don't know why we do, but I do know Success Magazine reported that the single biggest reason for failure was that people didn't act on what they knew they should do. Simply put, they procrastinated. If you find yourself procrastinating as well here's what to do.

1. Take 10-15 minutes to plan out your day.
a. Write out a to-do list and VIP it. Create a list of your "vital 12" to-call, to-write, to-phone and to-do. This might not seem like much to some but I'm willing to bet if you accomplished 12 things each day you're probably accomplishing much more than you usually do.
b. Write out a list of your "important 6." This includes one thing from each of the six important areas for finding balance in your life - mind, body, spirit, career, relationship and financial.
c. Write out a list of everything else you would like to do and this would be the "pleasing rest" of your day – this would make a great list of things to delegate.
2. Break downyour tasks into to smaller subprojects and never spend more than 20 minutes at a time on any one without taking a short 5 minute break. Even better than a short break would be to simply do something different for a few minutes – perhaps those small tasks that seem to trivial to schedule.
3. Accept ownership for everything that is vital and important and accept that you might never get around to what you listed as pleasing. So what you did what was vital and important.
4. Make your work as interesting as possible and multitask as many of your to-do's as you can.
5. Congratulate yourself at the completion of each day for a completing a productive day. Focus on what you've accomplished and not on what's left to do.

Happiness comes from liking what you do not doing what you like and it's never work when you like what you're doing.

The most important question you can ask yourself at any given time is, "What is the most productive use of my time right now?"

What have you been procrastinating about?