How To Avoid Procrastination As A Freelancer
Freelancers have the luxury to work their own hours, with who they want and even work from Starbucks if they want, but a lot of things can lead to procrastination. If you overdo things the luxury soon turns into a curse. Get into the habit of procrastinating and you might as well consider yourself doomed.
For those who have never experienced this: procrastination is a tendency to indulge in the unnecessary in order to avoid doing the necessary. It’s like there is some task that you have to perform and it is either very difficult or very boring or you don’t want to do it simply because you cannot avoid it. When you procrastinate you do everything under the sun but the work that you are supposed to do, even when that work is as serious as earning your bread-and-butter.
You may be wondering how a freelancer happens to acquire such an obnoxious habit in the first place. Actually you don’t even realize how and when. Since you are working on your own there is nobody to keep an eye on all your shady activities. So if there is a task you are supposed to perform at 10:30 in the morning you decide to start at 11:30. And when you have postponed it till 11:30, then what is the harm in starting it at 12:30, especially when you have to turn in the assignment at 5 o’clock in the evening?
And what are you doing till 12:30? You are reading some “interesting” stuff on the Internet; you are discussing punk philosophy on your favorite instant messenger with someone you barely know; you are visiting those hundreds of blogs that you subscribe to and going through all 67 comments? Then you click on the links of various commenters and from those links you go to some other links, and this goes on and on. By the time it is 5 o’clock in the evening you are leaving your 26th comment of the day on a blog you never plan to visit again, ever. And then you send an e-mail to your client asking for more time, swearing and promising yourself that you are never going to do such a thing again, and, of course the next day you do exactly the same thing. This is not funny; people lose entire projects due to stuff like this.
Procrastination is not an incurable malady; you can get rid of it even today, or tomorrow (in case you want to prolong the last remnants of the habit). Listed below are a few steps that you can take to overcome procrastination and deliver your projects on time.
Get Madly Interested In Your Work
You never postpone things you are crazy about. Try postponing eating food when you are hungry and try postponing sex when you are thoroughly aroused and your partner is beckoning you. Imagine how important (actually you don’t need to imagine, it is and ineluctable reality) the work you are planning to postpone is. Think about your work as the most exciting thing you are going to perform. Tell yourself that you are doing this work because you have always wanted to do this; you have always wanted to be a freelancer, your clients have trust in you, so much trust that they have paid in advance to you and now it is up to you to deliver the project on time.
Think about the money your work is going to get you and think about all the wonderful things you can do with that money, for instance, keeping your family financially secure.
Organize Tasks Visually
Visual representation of what you have to achieve on a priority basis can help you beat the tendency to procrastinate. Stick a big chart paper somewhere or better, purchase a whiteboard and put it where you can easily see it all the time. Then make a list of tasks that you have to perform in order to meet your professional commitments. Start with the most important, and then move downwards, and then adhere to that list. Of course if you can skip your work you can also skip the task list, but then, if you are so hell bent upon continuing procrastinating then you will also skip the steps listed in this blog post, so let us rule out that possibility for the time being.
Keeping a visual representation of your work schedule also makes it publicly known what all you have to do so you feel more responsible.
Make Yourself Accountable To Someone And Keep Yourself Exposed
Take someone in your family into confidence and tell that person to keep a track on your activities. The best way to do is, arrange your sitting position in such a manner that you have your back towards the door and the screen of your computer or laptop faces the door. You don’t necessarily have to face the wall; try arranging your desk by the window. This way anybody who enters your door can immediately see what you are doing and you have no time to switch the windows or close the programs that you’re not supposed to be running at that moment. Believe me, this can improves your productivity tremendously.
Recollect The Consequences Of Previous Procrastinations And Document Them
Procrastination always leaves behind a litany of consequences: you missed the deadline; you lost face while dealing with a punctual client; your payment was cancelled; the client threatened you; you earned less than what you could have earned; you spent more time on your work desk and missed many family activities; and lost projects. All these things are dreadful but sometimes because they belong to the past their shadows grow dim and their effect diminishes. It is always better to keep a list of consequences written somewhere. Whenever you feel that you are procrastinating just go through the list of consequences and you will be hit by great waves of urgency.
If Nothing Helps Then Take Your Work As A Necessary Evil
Embrace the drudgery if nothing else helps. Sometimes you have to work whether you like it or not — too bad. There are professional commitments, and then there is money that you need to pay your bills. You may have the savings for a few months but after that you will have to sort things out and by that time your procrastination will totally ruin your reputation and you will no longer be able to get work.
The best way to deal with something bad is to confront it; accept its presence in your life and then deal with it. You will only be able to deal with procrastination if you accept that it’s a problem.
Have you been procrastinating lately? Were you once a master procrastinator? Share your stories and your own tips & tricks with us! :)
Amrit
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Amrit Hallan writes on Content Blog and How To Plaza. He’s got great experience in writing, copywriting, blogging and SEO.
13 Rockin' Comments
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Hmmmm, what a blog to come across when procrastinating :D I suppose I better get back to work ;)
Subscribed to your RSS btw. Good blog :)
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Another procrastinator chiming in. lol.
It really is not that funny, because i have alot of work to do and here i am reading, reading, and reading.
“Make Yourself Accountable To Someone And Keep Yourself Exposed”. This line definitely got to me, as i feel that i do slack off, because there is no one to account to. But then again i dont want anyone to account to. I wish i knew some offline bloggers, i have plenty support online, but not offline.
Amrit, good post and great tips. Thx!
Missy.
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:04 am
I’ve just finished a project where I was at the mercy of procrastination.
Here’s a couple of things I came up with,
1. Keep a a text file open where you can type the things you would say to a co-worker, if you had one. This helps if you procrastinate in the form of thinking. If you keep turning the same idea over in your head, just write it down here. It’s also a good way to vent your emotions during your working hours, and to keep track of where you were emotionally during the course of the day.
2. The important thing about beating procrastination is that you are aiming to change your behaviour. Don’t focus too much on ticking off the check points, or producing x number of words. Your aim is to be as productive as possible during your working hours.
If you find yourself doing something that is not productive, return yourself to your work. If you find your mind wandering, if you find yourself thinking thoughts unrelated to work, return your focus to what you are doing.
You definitely must not allow yourself to think thoughts unrelated to your work because that is how it begins, it begins with thoughts, then moves to actions. The more you correct yourself, the easier it will become and the stronger your focus will be.
If you get an idea that doesn’t relate to your present task, quickly write it down in the separate text file.
Also, if you have a workday with no work scheduled, you should still practice your focus. So write some fiction or something, but don’t do it lazily, focus!
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:04 am
Procrastination is that not the American Way. With so much out there to distract us, reality shows, hey even stumbleupon can be blamed!
Your list is fantastic. Another great tool is to post something you want in front of you daily. Having that want reiterated and in your face can put that procastination to a halt and motivation back in overdrive. Its a good constant reminder of why you do what you do.
February 23rd, 2008 at 7:25 am
Procrastinator, guilty as charged. Hehe.
But right now I do have time to be doing this, so I’ll chip in my two cents. I think this is fantastic, especially the last part. I totally do that, I accept what I do as a necessary evil, I tell myself ‘this is going to pay my bills’ and just go through the motions. There’s no passion in it, sure, but things still get done, and any procrastinator worth his/her time procrastinated in gold can’t say fairer than that. What I do, at times, is convince myself that what I’m doing to pass the time is dull, boring and pointless (even an activity I enjoy) and get back to work. After that, though, I tune my head the other way - work boring, facebook fun - and just let loose. Hope that helped someone get back to work, somewhere. ;-)
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:52 am
I recently (like a couple of days ago) I started to use daily sheets to make a planning of stuff I want or need to do. So far it’s been helping me to get back to the activity I planned to do, when I’m about to surf on a tangent of thoughts, links or blogs :)
I also use the sheet to document my actuals and remarks, so I have a registration I can analyze and learn from.
But in the end I think procrastination does say a lot about yourself. There’s something in you resisting to start the task, and if you figure out what that is you have the key to solving it and preventing it from happening in the future. Preferably by preventing to let those activities to appear on your tasklist again ;)
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:03 pm
The type of clients I have keep me on track. I do freelance work for publishers who require very quick turnarounds, sometimes 24 hours but usually less than a week. They also don’t give me advance notice. I have several such clients, so my calendar is like a stack of dominoes: If I were to miss one deadline, it would eat into the time necessary to start the next project, and so that next project’s deadline would be in peril. And so on. You notice I used the subjunctive contrary-to-fact “were” If I were to miss one deadline. Because I simply cannot miss deadlines, it is thus not an option. Now, my friends who get one big, juicy, lengthy project that is due in a few weeks sometimes tell me they do have a problem with deadlines, because they have too much flexibility when it’s just one big job with one long deadline.
February 26th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
I think embracing procrastination means starting your own projects. At first you work on your projects to procrastinate with the client work you don’t want to do. Now the real benefit of this is when you start procrastinating with your own projects by doing your client work.
A few tips:
* Unsubscribe to all your feeds (Who can get work done with a big 154 unread blog posts)
* Listen to music or add something to your work environment that makes the boring work more fun
* Try to get more interesting work as much as possible. (though there will always be some boring work that we need to just get done)
Thx.
March 14th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Procrastination… that’s what it’s called! :)
I am struggling with this issue and I have concluded that a bunch of things “cause” this “P” thing to creep in. Comfort, Lack of motivation, Fear/Panic - “This is really up to me!” and a bunch more.
Soooo to tackle all this I have tried to go back to the time when I made the decision to go out on my own; and think of the things that pushed me to this decision and the work I put into making the plunge (I started reading all the notes I wrote whenever I got an idea about how I would do this - I keep a little notebook with me at all times for those ah ha! moments) and guess what? It worked!
In addition I decided to make mini goals/milestones for my projects and make a plan for each day. This way the LARGE project isn’t looming in front of you and you feel really good when you reach each goal, thus motivating you to keep going.
… Just my two cents!
Dawdler #1
June 9th, 2008 at 11:48 am
At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I think this procrastination is killing me. :-(
I have sat here all day clicking my outlook send/receive button. Browsing blogs and for the past 40 minutes, searched google for help on procrastination.
I’ve come to the conclusion that, tomorrow, I won’t even bother with that. I’ve wasted a day sitting here when I could be lying in bed avoiding the phone and the emails and the clients and the projects and the tasks and the to do lists and the 43 folders and on and on and on…
I’ve heard all the tips. Make a to do list, break big tasks in to smaller tasks, set a time limit on a task then reward yourself, on and on and on…
I’m a self employed IT professional. But I can see my freelance business going down the drain because I just can’t get started on anything.
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Thanks for the opportunity to rant.
Shaun
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