Most of us put off things to the last moment, or simply overshoot the deadline. The job could be an important or routine. Holding off work to the last moment might cause unnecessary tension, sometimes lead to missing a time sensitive work. When a work is missed out there could be repercussions like a penalty or wastage of other resources or simply disturb the flow of things, which nobody likes. But then, for some people this could be habitual. This habit of delaying could be seldom or often, that habit is called procrastination. Besides procrastination, there's also forgetfulness. I believe these two could be linked.
One could find a lot of helpful writeups or videos on how to beat this weakness or shortcoming. I've seen a few and found the suggestions practical. Then based on my experiences I devised a way, and wish to share it. Here's what I do: use setup Google Calendar events in such a way that I receive email reminders. For simple tasks, it's just one reminder sent late in the night. The first thing in the morning I do is check email for those reminders and plan to complete the tasks. As soon as a task is done, the reminder is deleted. When there are multiple work reminders, I see to that the tasks are done & reminders deleted well before the end of the day. Occasionally, a reminder may remain unread due to a genuine reason or you know what- procrastination.
A little about setting up calendar events. For time sensitive jobs like filing tax returns, paying insurance premium, renewing vehicle insurance, renewing driver's license, etc. I setup multiple reminders- a month, fortnight, a week and three days before the last day. For monthly bills, mobile validity renewal or broadband annual payment, etc. one reminder for the morning is sufficient. I receive reminders even for simple matters like birthdays & anniversaries, changing foot mats, cleaning up wardrobe, backing up data in some app, cleaning doors & windows, wash mosquito net. soaking rice for dosa batter, etc. etc. It's better to create redundancy rather than miss out things - I mean missing out things unintentionally too. Then I setup reminders to use gadgets which are less often or seldomly used, like a DSLR, an air-cooler, power-bank, emergency lamp, etc. That way I beat neglecting things to ruin.
One more helpful method for reminding things is to use alarms in your mobile. Say there's a chance you might forget to call someone at 10 AM since you are engrossed in some other work. So setup an alarm to go off at 9-55 AM. Add labels if you are using multiple alarms. For short term reminders, ay less than an hour, the timer feature your clock app comes handy. For example, when I put a vessel of milk on the cooker, I know it takes about 12 minutes to spillover. I setup the timer to go off at after 11 mins. Once the timer is done- I remain at the stove until the heating is done, turn off the gas and then get back to whatever I was doing. Likewise for cooking rice, heating sambar, boiling eggs, etc.
Use your imagination to make technology to manage your time. Since most of us hooked to our mobile phones while awake, put it to good use.
Hoping this post helps unprocrastinate and, to be heedful. Do share your thoughts.
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