Wudatime

There are words that, for one reason or another, despite being complicated, long, strange, or outside of the typical vocabulary of a normal citizen, one word manages to make a hole in our vocabulary. One of these words is "procrastinate".  The art of leaving for tomorrow what can be done today, which is the exact opposite of the popular saying?  As it has possibly happened to you, many people discovered Social Media as an enormous source of procrastination.  A disaster.

We know that we have obligations, and even still, we systematically postpone them, which makes us feel almost irremediably uncomfortable. In the end, we don't do the work when we have to, we do not fully enjoy what we are doing while we try to put our obligations off into a corner in our mind. Why? A simple explanation is there are always things that we would like to do more than the work that we have to do. In any case, for whatever reason, this detestable habit exists.  And for every one of us, we have to find a way of remedying it.

Divide your time into blocks

Essentially, it consists of scheduling what you will use your time for, in advance. To do this we must create a schedule that takes into account all of the work that has to be done on all of the days of the week and distribute time for each activity into blocks. This will take, ideally, about a half hour to an hour, depending on the level of concretion that we would like to use.

For example, in this calendar you can put work that you know you will have to do within a few days, so that, with enough foresight, you can know at what time you will be working on the tasks you have scheduled, and in this way you will know when you will be busy and exactly when you will have time to work on other things.

If we have a daily eight hour job at an office, we can divide our tasks for the day into blocks, like for example, prepare a report, call a client, set up a meeting, etc.  The same thing happens with the free time that you want, or need, to dedicate to activities that you enjoy, It can be learning a language, reading, or even organizing the storage room.  For any task, if you schedule it, will be easier to carry out at that time, if you do not postpone it and another benefit is, for the goals in life you are really looking forward to, you will generate more even more expectation for reaching goals

Do not schedule too much time in advance

A trick that we can use to gain the maximum benefit for the activities that we perform is to try not to schedule large blocks of several hours for any one activity. And why? Because the more time you dedicate to it, the less attention you have for it. It is the same for both obligations and pleasures; it is better to try to find time to take a break and change activities. This is a good idea, and always work structurally, because if not we run the risk of starting to procrastinate.

Break your rules

We have seen the benefits of using a scheduler,  but its risks are still there:  Fear, or the possibility of leading an extremely rigid or inflexible life, and without room to improvise. Because it is always possible that new plans or changes may appear at the last minute. We should, therefore, have enough leeway to change our plans at any moment. It can be for going out to dinner, for reading a new book, going out to have a few beers with friends, or also, why not just say it, to do what is required for our jobs or other pressing obligations. This will provide us with the perfect balance between planning and improvising.

Keep going forward and play it safe

The benefit of finding this balance is to give us freedom and at the same time that we manage to follow our schedules the majority of the time. If we manage follow our schedule the majority of the time, that means that our work will always, or almost always, be completed on time. When new situations and plans arise, we will have done enough to deal with them quickly, and without altering our schedule too much, or we might even have to say no to many of the plans that we particularly like.

In the end, it is all about prioritizing.  In our article "List your tasks and prioritize", you will find a few very useful tricks that will surely be very useful to you. We cannot say yes to all new plans, and do whatever we wish when new situations arise or plans arise when we should be working, but we also should be careful not to reject everything. And if we follow an appropriate plan it is somewhat unnecessary, because we will have time for everything.  No one can argue with organizing one's self in this manner, even at the cost of tying up our time occasionally, it is better than spending hours and hours regretting the fact that we are not working. If we organize and schedule well, we can make plans at the last minute, and  who knows, maybe it will leave you with enough free time to go out on a date!