Sunday Motivation – Stop Procrastinating!

How to stop procrastinating and finally get things done is the topic for our Sunday Motivation this week.

How do we stop procrastinating and what is it?  Procrastination: the practice of carrying out less urgent tasks in preference to more urgent ones, or doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time, sometimes to the “last minute” before a deadline.

In the health insurance world, we agents are required to re-certify with any company we want to sell for every year.  The month of September is usually when I get all mine done. This year I procrastinated and had one still left to do in October.  More on that in a minute.  Listen to Ellen Degeneres as she gives her take on the topic of how to stop procrastinating…

So why did I procrastinate?  My “excuses” got me side tracked.  My wonderful mother-in-law decided to give my husband her car since she can no longer drive. At 98 she had a stroke and is recovering pretty nicely 🙂  We needed to find the title for my husband’s car so we can sell it.  It was not in the place it was supposed to be!

I went through boxes and files and more boxes and more files!  I threw out two big black bags of stuff I wonder why I was keeping in the first place!  I found a check my Aunt had written to me for my birthday from 2008 and never cashed! I found some great family pictures that got me going down memory lane.  I found the title to my daughter’s car, but no title to my husband’s car! It appears I changed my filing method to putting things by year, which is why I found my daughter’s title because it was in the 2013 files, the year the car was paid off.  So there’s still hope that I will find my husband’s title if I can figure out the year the car was paid off.

Yikes, I can’t look for this anymore right now…I need to still do that certification!  When I finally sat down to do the FFM (Federally Facilitated Marketplace – part of the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare) the program kept going down (probably because there were other agents also procrastinating and the system was overloaded) and it took me twice as long to get it done!

Stop Procrastinating!

So what can we do to stop procrastinating?  There’s a ton on things we can do!  After watching lots of videos I decided on this one… because it’s summaries everything in only 2:48 minutes, so watch it now!  Then read some of the suggestions that I found while viewing all the other videos!

In Summary and what to do next…

Keep yourself organized with the one minute rule… If you can do something in less than one minutes, then do it now–don’t procrastinate and put it off till later. Put that file away rather than ending up with 10, 20, etc. files that need to be put away.  You will save valuable time in searching for information you need later (as I learned!) This applies to other stuff to… close the cabinet door, put the dirty clothes in the hamper, pause or bite your tongue before you say something you might regret later, make your bed, etc…you get the picture!

Use the 10 minute rule…break your task(s) into smaller manageable tasks that you can accomplish in 10 minutes or less.  You probably have heard the expression… How do you eat an elephant…one bite at a time!

Get clear on your goal… Answer these 3 questions:  Where are you? What do you want to do? How will you feel after you do it?  Write down what your goal or task is and really put energy in how you will feel after you achieve it!

Use your ultimate goal versus immediate desire to take action… What this means is, you know you need to get something done but you’d rather be doing something else!  Here’s 3 things you can do to help you take action…

1. Make your first task of the project something you can do and won’t mind doing and reward yourself after each of the other tasks as you accomplish them.
2. Get rid of any distractions (close down Facebook, Twitter, email, etc).
3. Set a timer as suggested in The Pomodore Technique.  Need a timer?  Use your computer, phone or get one like this one…Red Tomato Chef Vegtable Novelty Timer Kitchen Cooking Ring Alarm

Learn more…  Read some good books on the topic.  Here’s one on The Pomodoro Technique you might be interested in…Pomodoro Technique Illustrated (Pragmatic Life)

Comment and Contact Me…  As always, we love to hear from you! Please comment below and tell us how you overcome procrastination.

As a reminder to everyone, please don’t procrastinate with your health insurance options! Medicare open enrollment is from October 15th through December 7th.  Open enrollment for Obamacare is from November 1st though January 31st. There are penalties that you may have to pay if you do not have a qualified health plan.  If you would like to learn more about the insurance options that are available to you, fill in the contact form here.  I am only licensed in Florida but I can direct you where to get information if you are in another state.

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