No matter how hard we try, at times it is just impossible to complete that job you know you need to do. It could be just filing some paperwork, or working on a new proposition or even just updating your website’s blog page. Whatever the job may be, some of us will just do anything else in order to put it off. Obviously this can cause productivity in the workplace to drop and businesses need their level of output to be as high as possible at all times. With this in mind, here are a few tips to help you avoid procrastination.

1. Make sure you working in the right environment

This might not be that easy for everyone to change. For instance if you work in an office you won’t have too much control over the environment around you in which you work. However, if you are a remote worker or a freelancer, then choose your location wisely. Don’t sit on the sofa at home with the TV on and expect your work to flow. Get yourself in an environment where you can concentrate and focus.

2. Know when you get your best work done

Not everybody suits the 9-5 ritual. Some people aren’t productive in the mornings and will spend those hours dithering until they have lunch before they get started on work. It’s not a valid excuse for procrastination to say you’re not a morning person. If this is the case, then figure the times you do work to your optimum and stick to it.

3. Learn how to automate

Sometimes you will just have too many little jobs on at the same time to be able to think straight – why not get smarter about your work. For things like Twitter or Facebook updates, why not spend 1 hour per week scheduling in your posts in Buffer  and then only worry about your social presence one a week? CRM systems like Salesforce or Zoho are advanced enough these days that can automatically send invoice reminders to your clients, or email updates of a new product you’re going to launch. Automating your work can be a massive time saver, especially to small businesses, and make your huge workload seem much less daunting.

4. Set yourself strict deadlines to keep

Deadlines are good, they give you a timeframe in which you need to work within to complete your work. If for whatever reason you don’t have a deadline for the work you are doing then you should set yourself one and stick to it. Working to a deadline gives you a sense of direction of how urgent a task is. If there is no time when you need to finish your job then you will just keep putting it off and off. Set yourself milestone reminders in your phone or your email of where you should be up to and when you need to be finished by.

5. Put your phone away

Mobile phones are now an essential part of the business world. Everything is either available on mobile or moving to mobile, however phones can be a huge distraction. Sure you may have your work email on there and get important updates – but you also have quick access to WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and whatever other interesting apps and games you might have. Unfortunately, no matter how much we love them and have much of a necessity phones have become to our daily lives, they are a huge hindrance on productivity! Put your phone away and see the piles of work begin to disappear.

6. Don’t have dozens of tabs open on your browser.

It’s so easy when you are scrolling through Facebook or Twitter to just click on links that sound interesting and then leave those open on your computer. However, these are just distractions. Pages and pages of articles to distract you from the core activities you need to do. Try having an absolute maximum of 5 tabs at any one point then just see how much easier you find do your work!

7. Learn how to say “no”

“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say “no” to almost everything.” Warren Buffet.

You don’t have to be afraid of saying “no” to other people in the office, it’s not offensive and it won’t come across as being rude. Being able to refuse more work from others shows people that you are assertive and busy enough with your own responsibilities, whilst it also lets you finish your work in a quicker timeframe and maybe once you have finished all your work, then go back and offer your assistance.

8. Create a progress chart

Get a big white board, pop it up in a highly visible place on your wall and clearly write down everything you need to do. This way people will see how busy you are and not want to distract you, and you will always have a reminder of where you are up to in progressing through all your jobs. Additionally a progress chart will ensure that you won’t forget a smaller task that you need to do.

9. Don’t be too proud to ask to for help if you need it

Sometimes the amount you have on can be too overwhelming and that’s what prevents you from getting all your work started. So have the guts to step up and ask for help – share some of your workload so that you can really focus your mind on a few core tasks and get them completed to the best of your ability.

10. Remember the feeling of achievement you get when you complete a job

What better feeling in your job is there than completing a huge piece of work to a great standard? The waves of relief, pride and achievement you get is pretty difficult to top in the office – so why not harness this feeling and strive to get it more regularly? By remembering how great it feels to tick a task off your checklist you will always push yourself to accomplish that again and again!

Have you ever been asked to do something in your job that you totally agreed to do, then as soon as you said ‘yes’ you realised the thought of doing the task was kinda a bit scary… or daunting in the very least?

I have!

For some context; I’m extremely fortunate to be in a job that I love. I get all kinds of warm fuzzy feelings being in a customer service role; knowing that I can have an amazing influence on a person’s day by helping them with a problem and hopefully putting a smile on their face. It rocks! On the other side of the coin, it certainly hurts when I’m not able to provide an awesome experience for one of our users. This can be from a variety of reasons; I might not simply have the right the answer to their question. I may have taken too long to respond. Or, I may not have entirely listened to (or to be more precise; heard) the customer’s request fully and as a result, didn’t resolve the issue too efficiently.

I definitely had this experience a few weeks ago. It was early in my morning and I was trying to make my way through our support inbox and resolve as many emails as I could. Unfortunately I totally dropped the ball on one of the emails. A user was experiencing some trouble and had asked me to call them. To this I responded with an email, trying to help resolve the issue where I could and asked them to email me back.

At Buffer, we are amazingly lucky to be set up as a fully remote and distributed team dotted all over the world. It’s so cool that I have co-workers in Berlin, New York, Cape Town – and the list goes on! One of the amazing benefits of this set up, is that we have timezone coverage across the majority of the day. However, the fact that we are all so spread out means we don’t have a central location, or an office; we also have to be very mindful of our schedules and that we try to maximum our online coverage at all times. At times, though, this means setting up demos of our product or hopping on a customer call can be a little hard to organise.

As you might imagine, my response of asking them to email me back after originally being asked for me to call them, didn’t feel helpful to our user at all. I felt awful. I had made an already stressful situation, for our customer, much worse by not fully hearing what they needed. Even though doing customer calls wasn’t something I had done too much of before in a support role I quickly agreed to pick up the phone and dial out. I was nervous. Thoughts kept going through my head asking ‘If I couldn’t figure out and fix what was going wrong through email, would I be able to do it over the phone?’. What happened next really blew my mind!

I spoke to our customer and explained what had happened from my point of view, how absolutely sorry I was for the poor experience I had given them, and how I would love to help where I could. The response I got was phenomenal. Our customer even apologised to me; explained how they were trying to prepare for a big presentation about Buffer and how worried they were that they couldn’t get Buffer to work in advance of it. They said they were sorry for anything they said in the heat of the moment and really valued the time to talk to a real person. This really resonated with me. After we ended the call I felt possibly the most elated I had experienced after trying to help someone else – and to be honest I hadn’t even fully fixed their problem, although we got a nice workaround in place.

Since that day, I have always tried to schedule in a call where a Buffer user, new or old, have expressed a keen desire to have a real time conversation; and after each call I find real value in the conversations. I learned a great lesson just by listening to what our customer wanted on that first call.

People want to feel special; be valued. It can feel amazing when your email is responded to faster than you were expecting, yet imagine the feeling when someone takes 20 minutes out of their day to listen to your words, really delve into every question you have, learn your background and even have a laugh with you. That feeling goes both ways, too. I take a real enjoyment after speaking to a customer. Maybe this is because it’s still a bit novel to me and something that doesn’t happen all too frequently. Regardless of that, I like to think that each person I have spoken to has helped me just as much as I tried to help them.

From each call I get better experience of dealing with people. I get to interact with different cultures in a way I wouldn’t normally in everyday life. I hear what people find tricky about our product or what they want to use Buffer for. All of this is wonderful, and adds another enjoyment factor to my job.

When I hop on calls now, I still might not always have the right answer, but I know I will be able to work through each situation with a little more clarity and make sure the person I’m talking to knows I’m doing everything to really listen to what they want.

If you, like I did, find the initial prospect of hopping on customer support calls a bit daunting, I would love to share a few little tips to help ease you into them;

• Jot down some notes beforehand of your previous interactions – what type of questions will the customer ask? What was their problem or query in the first place?
• Make it personal. Greet them by name – someone’s name is their favourite word 🙂 and ask them about their day.
• Ask throughout the call if what you said was useful or helpful to them.
• Empathise with what they are saying and picture you were in their position.
• Thank them for their time and working with you. Then let them know they can get in touch with you again if they ever need to.

This quote from the classic ‘How To Win Friends And Influence People’ sums up my frantic thoughts on customer calls when I was so used to email support;

“Do you remember the things you were worrying about a year ago? How did they work out? Didn’t you waste a lot of fruitless energy on account of most of them? Didn’t most of them turn out all right after all?”

There is a great deal of value in connecting with a stranger to work towards a common goal, and truly listening to them can help you get there 🙂