Ultra-Procrastination: Avoid at ALL costs!

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I’ve recently become a victim of what I call ‘ultra-procrastination’ this is where you procrastinate so much so that the task which you needed to complete has totally lost track of its deadline. I have no idea how I got myself into this, but it’s a very mind-boggling situation that I urge all of you to stay away from. A little procrastination never hurt anyone (I think…), but don’t get yourself stuck in this cycle where you just procrastinate all day long. Here are a few ways of beating procrastination, ‘upping’ your productiveness and improving your general workflow.

Shut off everything – NO Distractions

When you’re working, it’s best to minimize EVERY distraction you can think of, and I mean every. If you’ve got Firefox open whilst you’re doing some graphics work on Photoshop, then close Firefox as you may just get tempted to continue browsing. If you need to look at some kind of brief whilst working, I find it easier to write the main points of the brief in a shortened, bullet-point version on PAPER. Yes, PAPER. That way the only program you have open in Photoshop, and that’s where all your focus is going.

The way I get into the ‘work mode’ is to do a flurry of things before I get down to work which build up to it:

• Do all minor tasks such as answering emails, making phone calls and what-not and get them out of the way.
• Make sure my office is tidy, and everything is in its place.
• Take out the project folder for the project at hand.
• Make sure I have a summarized version of the brief in front of me.
• Go and make some hot chocolate.
• Go back to office with hot chocolate and shut the door (maybe even lock it).
• Put a timer on which will go off in two hours.
• Make sure ALL WINDOWS are closed but the one you need (unless you HAVE to have more than one window open because your task demands it).
• Challenge yourself to work as effectively and efficiently as possible.
• Begin.

Ok, the list seems like it goes on forever, but the majority of tasks on it a very small, and build up to the actual work part. If you keep the idea in your head of challenging your workflow, then you tend to work more efficiently. Having a list of tasks I do before working is an incredible way of building up the right attitude to work; I recommend it to all.

Get a whiteboard

As unimportant as this sounds, getting yourself a wall-mountable whiteboard does wonders when it comes to listing tasks that need completion. It’ll help you keep all the tasks that need doing in mind, and helps a lot in terms of psychology as well. If you read your tasks on a whiteboard everyday, your brain will sub-consciously focus on those tasks without you even knowing it.

It’s better to just list tasks in small chunks rather than just writing something like ‘Complete [Project Name Here]‘. For example, you could write ‘Produce mockup logo for [Project Name Here]‘ which would make the task seem much more manageable.

To-Do Lists

To-do lists are very versatile in their use when managing your tasks that need to be completed for your freelance projects. It’s always good to have a weekly to-do list which you work through within the week, and just cross off as you do them, but what some people don’t do are daily to-do lists. Daily to-do lists are a way of becoming very efficient in your everyday tasks. Your daily to-do list should be very specific in what you need to do.

Concentrate on providing your solution

In order to produce a job well-done at a good rate, you need to concentrate on the fact that you’re trying to provide a solution to your client as best as possible. The best way to do this is treat the project as if it were your own. Now this may be difficult to do in some situations, but for design work for example it’s pretty simple to do. If you treat it as your own project, you’d want to make it the best possible so it had the best possible chance of succeeding, and this should be your mindset. Do this, and it’ll help you along the way with your projects.

Good Work = Treat, Bad Work = NOTHING

When you’ve finally done a solid week’s worth of work, you should aim to treat yourself for your work. This is to do with fulfillment and increases your general ‘quality of work ethic’ so you enjoy your freelancing more and more as time goes by. Even though I stress treating yourself for good work, you shouldn’t go overboard either. A treat for a week might be a night out at a good restaurant or something of the like; nothing that would ‘break the bank’ so to speak.

So there you have it, your great tips to becoming more efficient, and generally better your freelancing experience. Remember, procrastination = bad.

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