Procrastinator’s productivity tip #3

Clarify

You may be putting off a task or project because you’re not sure how to do it, but haven’t realised this is why you’re putting it off. First check if this is why you’re putting it off—perfectionists may similarly suffer from this as not feeling they’re competent for the task. Then clarify what the first step is to work through the task or project, including any research required to determine how to start.

Don’t get caught in the trap of spending inordinate amounts of time planning though, or too much time in research. It may be that there is no clean way to achieve the result you’re after, in which case it will need iterations through messing things up to get the required result, or prototyping and testing, or a mental atitude of living with the messy result and being happy enough with it to move on to the next task.