Procrastination and Productivity: The Twin Devils of the Work-at-Home Life [Video]

Working from home can get quite lonely. Yes, you can dictate your work hours and you don’t have to commute—in 2 seconds flat (for me, at least), you’re in your ‘office’ and ready to start the day. But then, there are two evils that you have to contend with when freelancing from home: procrastination and productivity.

Yep, the two Ps of work-at-home life. And if you can’t conquer one, you can’t have the other.

Here are two videos that may shed light on the science of both and how to master procrastination and improve your productivity...and of course, increase the dollars that you can rake in. :) 

The Science of Procrastination

Indeed, there’s a scientific reason why we put off things that we can do today. It has something to do with rewards and dopamines. Here’s how AsapSCIENCE, one of my favorites on YouTube, explains it:

Takeaways:

1. Temporal discounting has everything to do with our tendency to procrastinate...something about getting rewards nowe—and having that rush of the pleasure hormone dopamine—versus getting our rewards later.
2. The Pomodoro technique...which is simply breaking down your work into 20 minutes then a 5-minute break...definitely helps.
3. Acknowledge that you will procrastinate so best do something about it from the start. Create a deadline. An externally-imposed deadline is more effective.
4. Enjoying the process of doing something will prevent procrastination. Make a list of the reasons why you want to achieve a goal.
5. Work somewhere else if you can't remove the distractions. That way, the things that encourage procrastination is far from you.

After knowing what makes procrastination tick, let's see how we can overcome each and every distraction by increasing our productivity...

The Science of Productivity

On the other hand is the problem of how to increase our productivity. For the work-at-home maven, productivity is tied to how much you can earn. Here are some tips on how to work smarter to increase our productivity…and therefore, how many dollars we can rake in every month:

Takeaways:

1. Willpower is not a gurantee that we can stuff more doing in our 24 hours. A more methodical approach will help us accomplish more.
2. The first step: get started...a no-brainer, yes, but starting a project is the biggest barrier to productivity. Fortunately, there's the Zeigarnik Effect which helps us to carry on through to the end of a task—it's a construct of the mind that compels us to finish something that we started.Be like rock stars—spend more time focused on the hardest task and focus your energy in pockets. Breaking down a long project into sessions with planned relaxation is most effective—elite violinists practice for 90 minutes and break for 15 minutes before starting work again.
3. Give yourself a deadline and mark off tasks as they're accomplished in your calendar.
4. Create an accountability chart to document your progress - one column has the time span and the other activities you've accomplished during this period. (Click here to download a free accountability chart.)
5. Stop multitasking, because studies have shown that they're less productive. Instead, make a To Do list for next day. 

Download this free Accountability Chart. Click here.

[ Source: AsapSCIENCE ]