Dear P-Nation: It’s Not You. It’s Me.

Post written by Missy Johnson, Principal, MJMeetings, LLC | Meetings Consultant | Gourmet Food & Wine Enthusiast | Sports Fan

If there’s one thing I know to be true about myself, it’s that procrastination is my friend. I mean a REALLY good friend.

Throughout my life, I’ve seemed to operate better under the pressure of a deadline than when I have plenty of time to complete a project. Whether for work or home, I just can’t get my brain to focus on a project if there’s no time-frame to complete it.

This isn’t a new problem for me. My friend Procrastination (let’s call her P-Nation) has been with me since my teenage years, and even though I routinely resolve to not let her get in my way ‘the next time’, she always does.

She’s wonderful at distracting me when I’ve set aside time to work on a project and she’s also great at talking me into doing something more fun instead of the sometimes-boring-but-necessary project I really should be doing.

Well, NO MORE!

And this time I mean it. P-Nation is going to be taught a lesson or two and it starts now! I’m employing a few new strategies to combat her persuasions and un-friend her:

Effective Calendar Management!

This may sound pretty easy, but it also works. If I schedule time on my calendar to get a project done AHEAD of when I need to do it…it usually gets done. Now I may move the appointment on my calendar from one day to another or from one time to another, but as long as I don’t delete it, I will always follow-up on what I’m supposed to do.

Tomato Timer – http://tomato-timer.com/

I’ve recently found this easy tool on the web and the logic is simple. Set the timer to focus on a project for 25 minutes and then the timer re-sets for a 5 minute break. You can take a longer break if needed, but this way you are forcing yourself to work uninterrupted for a defined period of time. Focusing my mind for small increments of time works really well for me.

This is the time of year that I always seem to have many outstanding projects to complete. Some of them are items I wanted to get done before the end of last year that didn’t (like finally organizing all of my recipes both old and new in one place for easy access) or projects that require a little more time and focus than I typically have (like refreshing my LinkedIn Profile).

So I’ve really taken to my NEW friends, Calendar Management and Tomato Timer…and my old friend P-Nation isn’t too happy about it…but she’ll get over it. In the end, it just feels great when I schedule focused time to work on projects and cross them off my ‘to-do’ list.

Who’s with me on this? Anyone else really suffer from too much time with P-Nation or other annoying “friends”? What other strategies do you use to combat her persuasive ways? I’d love to hear from you!