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Q&A: How do I stop procrastinating when working from home?
As someone who works from home, I don’t have anyone to keep me in check, which makes it easy to procrastinate (especially when the project is challenging).
How do you keep yourself accountable? I would truly appreciate any tips or suggestions!
The most common advice you’ll receive for this question is to use other people for accountability. Whether that’s to join a coworking space or body doubling on a Zoom call, this advice focuses on using peer pressure to get things done. This isn’t bad advice, but keep in mind two things:
- This advice is specifically for one type of person (someone that peer pressure works on)
- This approach is often used as a crutch
The benefits of this advice are that it’s simple and requires zero self-reflection on why you’re struggling with accountability. The downside is it’s easy to look busy rather than be productive, and you don’t have the tools to get the thing done when people aren’t around.
Instead, I recommend two approaches:
First, start with the question, “What projects have I done without procrastinating? What was different about them?”. This allows us to do some analysis around what makes you tick.
