Showing posts with label Procrastination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Procrastination. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Know about personal goal setting

Have you ever thought that personal goal setting plays a vital role in personal time management? Life is full of choices and decisions, and you are bound to manage these and not the flow of time.
Many would ask how goal differs from objectives. Objectives are nothing but sub goals, which serve as a mean to achieve the goals. When you set a goal, you then move onto setting of objectives. The objectives are as important as your goals are. The conditions you provide to reach a goal, resources you collect, skills you evolve, the knowledge to be acquired, and things that should be achieved before reaching the goals would be the various objectives.
Goals give you three advantages; keep you on track, let you be aware of when to celebrate, and provide a focused plan to work. Points to be noted in goal setting is, the goal should be better than your best, and it should be based on productivity rather than production i.e., getting things done right and fast.
Now, lets take a look at the essentials of goal setting. Firstly, you should set SMART goals, which implies that your goal should be
1)Specific
2)Measurable
3)Attainable
4)Rewarding
5)Timely
Here, why we say your goals should be specific is because you will have a better idea of what to be achieved and have specific standards to achieve those set goals. The vital point to be remembered in goal setting is, write your goals. Remember! If you have a specific goal, then the success in not far.
When you can say a goal is measurable is if its progress can be measured. The goal should have a specific criteria that intimates you on reaching the goal.
A goal is said to be attainable when you can see the realistic path of achieving it. This doesn't imply that you have to choose the simple and easy-to-achieve goals. It is definite that the best-working goals involve complexities, but, they are a great source of motivation and induce the sense of achievement.
If you have a clear reasons for achieving a goal, then it is surely rewarding. Even here, you need to write down the reasons and rewards of your goals. When you got stuck up, glance through them, you will surely overcome the difficult moments.Finally, your goal should be time bound. The reward of your goals is earned through the time. Hence, you can avoid paying high price for the goal by setting deadlines. You need proper and effective time management training. This way, you can get rid of procrastination and attain perfectionism.

Ways to avoid procrastination

When you put off things that you should be doing now is called procrastination, which is a major deviating factor in time management. While some procrastinate to a certain level, there are may who are habituated to this. When you come across a situation that you postpone vital tasks, thinking that you would get more time and better mood in future to optimally perform the particular task, then you are prone to procrastination. As a result, you would be bound to be in crisis when the deadline is nearing, you would experience low productivity, and finally, your career would be at stake.
The only possible mean to get rid of this habit is to recognize its reasons and take necessary actions to control before it creates chaos in your professional life. Here are some causes of procrastination; waiting for the right mood and for the right time. The other factors are lack of goals, underrating the difficulty of the task and the time required to complete it, ambiguity of the tasks, and feeling that a particular task is imposed on you. The other causes of procrastination are underdeveloped decision making skills, fear of failure/ success, and perfectionism.
Lets discuss the ways to overcome procrastination. As a first thing, you should recognize that you are procrastinating. For this, you need to analyze whether you are spending most of your work time in doing task which are of low priority, say reading mails and thinking what to do with them. Check whether a task is pending for a quite a long time in your To Do List. You wait for the right time and mood to do the important tasks.
On analyzing, you have to find out the reasons for procrastinating. You might procrastinate because of the given task, or you could be the sole reason for it. On identifying the irrelevant factor here, you apply the best approach and head on towards the success. If you find a job is monotonous, it is better that you wind it up quickly and get on to the interesting task. In case, you are disorganized, then you will be tempt to procrastinate. Organized people maintain a To Do List, where they prioritize their work. This way, they can have a clear idea of how important a work and when to be completed. Even if disorganized people try to get organized, they might tend to feel stressed with the task. You may feel they you have no enough skills or resources to accomplish a task.
You can avoid procrastination, only when you start avoiding it. Here are some tips to motivate yourself and get rid of this deep-rooted pattern of behavior.
1)Reward yourself when you accomplish a task on said time.
2)Ask your colleague to monitor your work.
3)Visualize those embarrassing consequences of not doing the work on time.
4)Maintain a To Do List.
5)Prioritize the work in your To Do List.
6)Set time-bound goals.
7)Concentrate on just one work at a time.
Hope, these time management training tips help you get rid of procrastination and be a master in getting things done on time.