How to stop procrastinating and get to work

We've all been there. That deadly monster called procrastination has hit us all and I am sure every one of you out here reading this article has felt guilty mindlessly browsing on the internet for hours at a stretch without keeping track of the time. Before you know it, you've spent your entire day online without any productive task accomplished. If its not online, your mind will find some or the other reason to deviate you from your task and switch to something else. As a college student, I remember every time I had an important assignment or a project to complete, which I had no motivation to do, I would find other menial tasks that would make me feel slightly productive, like clean my room instead or do my laundry. Here's the trick now, your mind can be tricked into increasing the significance of a task and hence getting to work! The good part about beating this procrastination demon and getting to work is awareness. By the looks of it, if you're reading this article, you have reached that stage. Without further ado, I will break down the steps needed to actually quit procrastinating and getting to work.

1. Find a comfortable place: I know this sounds really basic and irrelevant but the environment in which you work really does play a crucial role in the quality of the work you do. So, go ahead and find a place free from distractions. If you're working at home, shut yourself off in a room and lock the door, inform all members of the house that you need to work and hence should not be disturbed for a given time frame.

2. Keep all technology away- Your smartphone and gadgets are the biggest distractors! In today's age of technology, we spend so much time on our phones that our attention span has become limited, even while not using our phones. The best way to get work done is staying away from all distractions, like the notifications that keep popping up.

3. Break the task into micro tasks- Now this is the most important step. The key reason behind procrastination of a task is finding the task too daunting and large to complete, which causes self-critical bias in the brain and tricks you into becoming lazy so that your brain can adopt short-cuts! It is a defense mechanism of later making excuses of a poor outcome on the lack of time so that you don't feel bad about yourself.

Hence, when you break the bigger task into smaller, more achievable goals, your brain actually thinks you are making progress and gets motivated to complete it further.

4. Review and reward yourself- Now most common tips like this suggest that you reward yourself after working for a certain period of time. But this is where my blog is going to differentiate from the cliche and tell you NO! Do not take a break or reward yourself unless you review the work you do and actually think you have made good quality progress. Quality over amount of time spent on the work anyday!! I cannot stress this enough because, for example, you could be sitting staring at your page for a good two hours without actually doing any productive studying and then thinking you deserve a break for sitting for two hours. Only when you have made sufficient progress towards the final goal, should you get up and reward yourself.

5. Visualize the final outcome- When your brain paints you a good picture of success and gives you a glimpse of how it feels to complete this daunting task, you will feel more motivated and prepared to complete it and actually feel that way.

Now that you've read my 5 tips, CLOSE EVERYTHING AND GET TO WORK NOW! The first step towards avoiding procrastination and getting to work is actually STARTING...