How to Avoid Procrastination and Stay on Track

I would love to say that I never procrastinate, but that would be absolutely untrue. I can put things off as easily as anyone. But I have found a way to avoid procrastination, and it’s called a schedule. Yes, you read that right. A schedule—in the form of a to-do list. There’s the long-term goal list, and from it I make a daily to-do list.

I sit down the night before and make out the to-do list so I can start right in on it the next morning. I list the major tasks I want to complete the next day, then I assign a time allotment to each task. Say I need to do a particular type of marketing, such as getting on the Internet and locating newspapers to contact with press releases. And I also want to work on an article for a particular publication, or write something for one of my blogs. I put all the things I feel are necessary to get done right away on my to-do list.

Next morning when I wake up, I don’t have to sit down and try to figure out what should be done first. It’s written down in black and white. I find it is so much easier to follow a script for the day than try to figure it out after breakfast, when it might be tempting to just goof off.

I could never have written three books, scores of articles, and worked for businesses without some sort of schedule to keep me on track, so my daily to-do list is an absolute necessity.

Then there are those days when I don’t really want to avoid procrastination. Sometimes it is simply too tempting to ignore the schedule and go play. For instance, the weather is beautiful and I don’t have a looming deadline, so I take the day off and do whatever I want. But when I seriously need to achieve certain goals and meet a deadline, I can look at my to-do list and begin checking off the items, one-by-one, as I finish them.

By the way, you can make up “To-Do” forms on your computer and store them there, or print them out and fill them in each night. I like a printed form that I can hold in my hand, so I can clip completed forms together and save them. Then, at the end of a year, I can look back and see how much has been accomplished. There’s something really rewarding and inspiring about seeing a stack of to-do lists with every item on them checked off.

Succeeding at writing and avoiding procrastination isn’t rocket science. It simply involves deciding what you want to achieve, then scheduling the steps necessary to reach your goals. Or as I was taught many years ago: “plan your work, then work your plan.” It really is that easy.