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You may be the kind of person who constantly puts off doing tasks that are boring or difficult. The longer you delay getting round to the tasks, the greater will be your resistance to them and, therefore, the harder it will be to actually complete them.

You may avoid doing a task for various reasons: the job is boring or routine; the task is too difficult; the work has no deadline; the goals are unclear; or you simply have so many things to do that you don’t know where to start. Or you may be afraid of failure or rejection if you perform badly.

In certain circumstances, it is right to make a decision not to undertake a task: when you need to collect all the information or when you need time to think. But, on many other occasions, it simply boils down to delaying doing something.

Here are some ways to help you break through the barrier of extended procrastination:

“You may delay, but time will not, and lost time is never found again”

Benjamin Franklin, 18th-century American statesman and polymath

1 Break a large task down into more manageable sections (see Secret 4.5). Tackle one part, not necessarily the first part. The fact that you have completed a small section will then make you feel better about the whole.

2 Start on the hardest part. Do this in your most productive, high-energy time (see 1.3).

3 Give yourself a reward, but only after you have actually completed a task.

4 Work on routine tasks in your least productive time or as a break from periods of concentrated activity.

Procrastination ultimately makes a job more difficult.