Psychologist Dr Patrick Keelan has a series of questions to ask yourself when you feel stuck with your work. These four questions can act as a flowchart to help you beat procrastination and be productive again.
Photo by media.digest.
For this exercise, it doesn’t matter what type of procrastinator you are. The four boxes of the flowchart are:
- Have I made an action plan?
- Are the actions in my action plan small enough?
- Have I used the five-minute rule when my motivation to take action is low?
- Have I addressed any rules driving my procrastination behaviour?
In general, if your answer to any of the boxes is no, you head back to a previous one to flesh things out, but you can read more at the link below.
We’ve actually talked about these concepts before, like how the five-minute rule to start doing any work for five minutes breaks the procrastination rut. And breaking down tasks to a “for dummies” level is an old trick too. But these productivity techniques truly shine when used together with Dr Keelan’s approach of combining them into an if-then flowchart.
Overcoming procrastination: A flowchart approach [Dr Patrick Keelan]
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