Productivity TIPS for Procrastinators (Like Myself)

Not so long ago, I used to waste my time procrastinating (a week ago, more like a year ago, to be honest). I wasn’t in the best place emotionally, not that the amount of productivity you have reflects your mental state but for me, I used to spend hours on end thinking of all the things that I wanted to accomplish and fill myself with anxiety by not doing any one of them. Getting up to make a list became too much and that’s something because I’m a lister through and through; as well as it didn’t help in terms of following the goals that I wanted to accomplish. Throughout the years I spent so much time procrastinating that I’m pretty sure I can get a Ph.D. in procrastination. I hope these productivity tips help you with starting to work on your dreams and projects.

Quick mention before we head into this blog post. You don’t have to be productive all the time. We all are human beings and we all need time for self-care and mental health care.

Find your Why to Motivate Yourself

The first thing that you need to do to get on your productivity spree, you need to determine WHY you want to be productive in the first place. It could be for time efficiency or like in my case in which I was doing nothing, to start working on your dreams and get out of your head every once in a while.

The thing that I did to physically motivate myself is journaling in my bullet journal on a daily basis. I will literally write every single thing I did throughout the day and that included random things like washing my hair, doing math homework, taking a quiz, painting my nails, etc. This made me realize that my days weren’t going to complete waste. I may have just binge-watched a K-drama and that was my task for the day.

In youtube, there are productive days in the life vlogs which can be motivational and inspiring to some including myself. Though I understand that for some people it might make them feel overwhelmed or bad about themselves so this depends on how you feel about these types of vlogs.

Be Aware of What’s Going On

With the start of my bullet journal, I made a simple calendar spread to make sure that I stayed up to date with upcoming events, holidays, and tasks at all times and did not feel a rush the day before.

Still, I gotta be honest with you, at first, it was a struggle to keep up with my bullet journal and till this day it sometimes is but the beauty of it is that the system is so customizable that you can change it as you go to fit your needs.

For instance, for my first habit tracker, I made such a huge list of habits to track for my first month of bullet journaling but when I looked back on it at the end of the month I realized I was expecting too much for a beginner and took out a couple of the things that I was tracking and made a more realistic list.

That wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t started the bullet journal. I remember that I was planning on starting a bullet journal the year after the summer in which I started it and I’m grateful that I started it when I did because it truly changed the game for me.

Read

This depends on the person. For me, reading is a big part of my life, and the thing that helps me maintain a positive mindset and makes me feel good. I may not do anything aside from reading throughout the day and that’s enough to make me feel like my day was successful.

That’s why it is so important for me to get out of reading slumps every time I get into one. If you want to start a reading habit I recommend you check out this blog post I made on how to create a reading habit from scratch.

I list out the books I will be reading throughout the month in my Life Monthly Planning posts and you can see them all or most of them in my kit.co profile.

Productivity Inducing Tasks

Determining your productivity inducing tasks is important as well as making sure they are healthy for you. I will be mentioning mine down below.

• Drinking Water= For some reason I get thirsty when I’m being productive and getting things done which turns out to be good because I end up drinking lots of water throughout the day.
• Do Yoga= This is particular to the sort of exercise each individual can do. I’ve implemented a daily 10-minute yoga routine these past few months. I’ve noticed that when I do yoga in the morning I end up having more productive days.

Schedule Tasks & Events

I used to do this after school when I wanted to get a lot of things done. When you schedule realistic time slots into your day, you get to see at a glance what things you have time and how much time you spend on certain areas in your life.

I made Weekly Productivity Schedule Printable you can get by subscribing to my weekly newsletter.

Make Daily To-Do Lists

As I said, I love lists. You can make yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily to-do lists. Making lists helps you determine your priorities and work on the things that matter to you the most.

Set up a Workspace

I know that not everyone has the opportunity and space to set up a workstation and that’s completely fine. You don’t need anything fancy. You just need a thing that gets you in a productive mindset. I know a lot of people who use certain candle scents for when they work.

In my case, I have my desk with everything ready for me to just press a few buttons to get the tech going and all of my planners lined up for me to reach for when they are needed.

Rewards

Giving yourself rewards after big accomplishments can be motivating when you have to get big projects done. Self-Care is not a reward, you should do self-care whether you are being productive or not. I believe that self-care tasks should be done when needed and not have to be earned in any shape or form.

For instance, school is a priority and when I have a big assignment and get it done; when I finish it, I move onto working on the things that I want to like crafting projects which are not a necessity but they make me happy and I consider them a reward.

1 Self-Care Activity

It is important that you take care of yourself every day. I recommend doing at least 1 self-care activity per day. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, you can just consider your daily journaling as self-care or any minor task you like to do daily for self-care.

Be Realistic, You Are Human

Unless you are an unidentified alien reading this or a robot, as a human, you need rest and you are not perfect nor you should be. You don’t have to be productive at all times and remember that every day is a brand new start to work on your dreams.

I hope you liked this blog post and that you found it helpful. Tell me down below what is an activity or something that motivates you to be productive.

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Be Yourself, Be Happy, Be Human.
Lots of Love, Patrick.