Oh, Why do I Procastinate ?

When I decided to start this blog, my goal was very simple, to quit my day job in two years making twice what I make in my day job. My target to do this was to post 1 blog post a day in the first 6 months ,then 2 blog posts after 3 months then 3 blog posts after the first 9 months.

That is when I discovered one of the reasons why I’m not so successful off line either. I am a big procrastinator. I have to say that blogging does show you who you really are. Blogging is a very simple concept, write as much as you can and consistently and your success in this builds on itself , so why don’t I just do that ? I put off everything that can be done today to tomorrow. I have yet to see this tomorrow as only my work load increases. So I have come up with my own method of not stopping my procrastination cold.

1. Start Blogging Immediately . Every time I go around the web looking at the latest news, the latest blogs, the latest widgets, I never go back to blogging. I will spend the rest of the day, planning, organizing, testing , uploading, downloading , but never writing anything on my own blog. I have noticed that when I don’t post new articles on my blogs, I lose my viewers permanently. So the first thing I do now is to start at least one blog post here before I do anything else.
2. Turn off the TV. I never knew how distracting the TV can be until I had one week off from work and after the week was up I still had not done what I was supposed to have done. I had been watching “very important issues” on tv for a full week . I don’t remember any of the ” very important news” anymore and now there seems to be ” more important” news. In the meantime, my blogs had gone without any posts for 1 week and I was way behind with my schedule. In the same vain, I don’t answer the phone anymore when I’m typing or even answer the door. I have realized that when people want to tell me something important, they always call back.
3. Set blogging timetables. This is also something that can be easily abused especially when starting out. I have now realized that I have a lot more time over the weekend to set my timetable for the next week. My daily routine is set up the day before after I have finished all the work that was necessary to be done that day. However the weekly goal was set up on Sunday afternoon. It is a lazy and fun thing to do on Sunday instead of doing articles.For example, there are a number of things in blogging that need to be done other than just posting articles for example, commenting on other blogs, promoting your blog, etc. Most of these can be done in a short period, however it can be boring doing them daily so I do them on a day I know I am very tired from my normal job. So instead of trying to write a blog post on a day when I know I am overworked at my day job, I choose that day to do those menial little things that my blog needs .
4. Breaking up Blogging tasks. I learnt this from my day job. I have like 120 deliveries to do when I go to work. It always looks like I will never complete them when I start the day. But I have noticed that the sooner I get to the first delivery, the sooner I get to the second and so on . By the end of the day, the 120 deliveries have been completed and I have traveled 250 miles. Same thing with blogging, the sooner I can get the first tasks done the sooner I will complete the rest.
5. Motivate yourself . After doing a whole week of constant non-stop blogging, I come back at the end of the week to see the results. Nothing gives me more motivation than to see that I have a full blog schedule done for the week and seeing the hits that have accumulated over that period. I then imagine that if I’m happy after one week, what about 3 years down the line. How much body of work can one have with just one blog post a day for 3 yrs, 1095 pages of hard work and surely if you have not quit your day job by then , blogging is not for you.

It is hard to stop procrastinating but if one can overcome that, then one is on the way to being a successful blogger. It’s also good to know that you are not alone in procrastination. Everyone has had to fight it one time or another. Even the rich have it and that is one of the main reasons they hire personal assistants.

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