Did you know that September 6th is Fight Procrastination Day? Yes ma’am. You see, I meant to post this on the 6th but I put it off.
Just kidding. Actually I just found out about this. But I thought it was worth talking about, and better late than never. 
What do you procrastinate about?
I’m not a big procrastinator in my business, but in my non-business life I find that I have too much tolerance for a lot of things, and then when they get way past the point of reasonable tolerance, I overreact. I’m trying to get a handle on that by solving problems while they’re mere “gnat bites” instead of waiting until they’re intolerable.
According to a study by the University of Calgary, more than 25% of Americans are chronic procrastinators. What is this costing us?
For starters, many things get far worse when they’re put off, and it’s a good idea to analyze that to give yourself permission to put off some things, and motivate you to do others asap. For example, dishes. If you put off doing the dishes, they’re harder to clean. If you put off vacuuming, it doesn’t really take you any longer to do the job once you do it, at least not that I’ve noticed.
What about in a business context? If you put off tweaking the design of your website or your blog template, you probably won’t suffer much in terms of income. But if you procrastinate about sending out your newsletter, it will probably cost you money!
What has helped me to overcome procrastination is two things:
1) Knowing my hourly wage
2) Outsourcing
Firstly, I sat down and figured out how many hours I work each month. I divided my monthly income by that number and got my hourly “wage”. I find it highly motivated to sit down to the computer when I KNOW that I’m going to make XX dollars in that hour! Try that and see if it doesn’t help you.
Secondly, outsourcing helps keep me on my toes for a couple of reasons. One, if I’ve paid someone to do something for me, for example add a bunch of articles to a site, then I feel motivated to make that money I’ve spent “earn” itself by getting into action doing my part, which is to edit the content to make it my own and monetize it.
Secondly, if I’m putting off starting a new project (like I’ve been guilty of here), then I hand it over to a VA to start working on. When she’s done her magic, I’m over the motivation hump and get excited about seeing the project unfold (and the income that it will bring once completed!) and get to work. It’s like looking at the blueprints of your new home. Once you see the foundation poured and the walls go up, you’re all excited.
Alice Seba recently released a free report on outsourcing that you can pick up from her blog. One of the things she talked about inside was how to outsource when you’re on a small budget. I know how to do that. I don’t have Alice’s outsourcing budget by any means, but I do outsource a good percentage of my business tasks. It takes some creativity.