Part of helping people declutter and organize their home, office and life is coaching them through their procrastination to make decisions or take actions that they have been putting off. I’ve said it over and over, but clutter is delayed decisions. So the only way to declutter is to make those decisions.

Procrastination drains your energy and you don’t even realize it. There is nothing as mentally exhausting as an uncompleted task or decision. The most common reasons for procrastination are:

• Difficult: The task or decision seems hard so we avoid it in favor of those things which seem easy to us.
• Time-consuming: The task or decision seems like it will take a lot of time and there isn’t alot of time available.
• Perfectionism: The task or decision feels too overwhelming to get it done perfectly so instead we just put it off.
• Emotional connection: The task or decision is linked to a painful time in our life so we choose to ignore it hoping it will go away.

The best trick to powering through procrastination is to start your day doing the most difficult task on your to-do list, or making the decisions you have been putting off, before doing anything else. In other words, addressing the thing you dread the most first, rather than letting it sit there and doing 100 other unimportant things. This will give you the energy and momentum you need for the rest of the day.

Here’s your challenge…look at your to-do list (or your pile of decisions you’ve been putting off) and pick the one you are dreading the most and tackle it now. I’m confident that you will find it was much easier than you built it up to be and very empowering. Please share what you tackled with me and how it went if you have time. I’d love to hear your stories.