by Lori Voth

Created on: February 10, 2010

Overcoming procrastination requires will power and self discipline.  It requires strength and courage to face tasks and situations that are uncomfortable, anxiety provoking, boring and unfamiliar. It also means we must accept the possibility of making mistakes or being imperfect.

Since none of these feelings are easy to confront, controlling procrastination does not simply come down to acknowledging what they are.  Most of us know fully well all the fears that lead to our procrastinating. While identifying the causes can surely help in overcoming procrastination in the long term scheme, this reflective process does not usually stop procrastination in the moment.

Many procrastinators are too smart for their own good.  This makes it difficult to keep deadlines and accomplish goals in a timely fashion if the only person you are held accountable to is yourself. Experienced and determined procrastinators can talk themselves into putting anything off.  What we need are techniques to apply on a day to day basis that will ultimately get the tasks completed.  It almost comes down to tricking our minds.

Here are some ideas:

*Prioritize and Limit Your Daily To Do List*

This tip comes from the "Mastering Your Adult ADD Client Workbook" by Steven A. Safren, Susan Sprich, Carol A. Perlman and Michael W. Otto. Here's the gist:

Get out a piece of lined paper and starting at the top put an "A" at the beginning of the first line. Now do the same for the 4 rows directly underneath; one letter "A" for each row.  Next, do the same, but mark 5 rows with letter "B". Finally, below that, label 5 rows with letter "C".  

The letters represent the priority levels of your tasks and you will make a daily To Do List based on them. The rule is only a single task is allowed per row and you must prioritize your task list to include no more than 15 items. (5 for each priority level). "A" represents those tasks that are urgent and cannot be put off any longer.  "B" represents those of medium importance. "C" will be assigned to those easy tasks we are all familiar with that require little effort and/or pain but are not really emergencies to complete and take up all of our time.

The part in this technique that is key to help control procrastination is the rule that you must do your tasks in order, starting with all of the "A"s. Make an agreement with yourself that you will not check off the "B"s or "C"s until those priorities in "A" are done; regardless

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