How to Stop Procrastinating: a simple Guide to Mastering Difficult Tasks and Breaking the Procrastination Habit

Option #2: How to Stop Procrastinating Method
The exercise that I recommend for readers of this book is to think about
everything that you must (or would like to) do for the next 3–12 months.
Forget about your long-term goals or bucket list items. Just focus on the
items that you have the ability and capacity to do from today until one
year from now. That’s it!
In the notebook that you started using during the previous exercise, write
down the answers to these questions:
Is there a medical issue that you’ve been putting off?
What work-related projects are coming up?
What personal projects are coming up?
Is there a vacation that you’d like plan with your family?
What habits would you like to build?
Are there incomplete household tasks that you keep putting off?
What meetings and appointments are coming up?
What goals would you like to accomplish?
Are there any important events coming up for your family
members?
Is there an exercise program you’d like to start?
Are there any projects that you know you need to do but you’ve
been putting off?
Do you keep ignoring important—but not urgent—daily tasks?
You don’t need to answer all these questions. In fact, you could ignore

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these prompts and write down whatever pops into your mind.
What’s important here is to list all the unfinished items that have been
going through your mind. These are the open loops that take up your
mental bandwidth and cause you to feel anxious on a daily basis.
Finally, where you keep this list doesn’t really matter. It could be in a
notebook like I suggested in the previous step
or in an app like Evernote
.
The important thing is to store all these tasks in a central place that you’ll
have access to every day, because you’ll be referring to this list
throughout the rest of the steps in this book.

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