Get More Done Faster With These 6 Tips

The other day, one of my coach­ing stu­dents emailed me about his dilemma — some­thing that’s all too com­mon in our business.

“Too many times,” he said, “I’ve known what I needed to do, and I always end up wait­ing weeks on end to do it.” He asked, “How do you cope with procrastination?”

Pro­cras­ti­na­tion is indu­bitably the copywriter’s most sti­fling prob­lem. Since our job is fraught with dead­lines, pro­cras­ti­na­tion can be one of the costli­est prob­lems in the copy­writ­ing busi­ness. It can mur­der your reputation…

… And your career!

So, how do you cope with pro­cras­ti­na­tion? Even bet­ter, how do you over­come it? Here are six tips I use, which helps me to get more done faster.

1. Take Responsibility

Pro­cras­ti­na­tion plagues even the best of us. We all do it from time to time. We wait, make excuses, get distracted.

Some peo­ple blame it on ADD. Oth­ers blame it on the free­dom of being a self-​​employed free­lance copy­writer with­out any of the usual work rules we see in a cor­po­rate job.

But what­ever the rea­son may be, they are no dif­fer­ent than the excuses we use to keep putting off until tomor­row what can — and needs to — be done today.

As Dr. Robert Anthony said: “Wait­ing is a trap. There will always be rea­sons to wait. The truth is, there are only two things in life, rea­sons and results, and rea­sons sim­ply don’t count.”

Admit­tedly, there are some deep-​​seated, psy­cho­log­i­cal fac­tors behind pro­cras­ti­na­tion — such as low self-​​esteem, anx­i­ety, fear, addic­tion, even depression.

But these often refer to chronic pro­cras­ti­na­tion, which is a whole other ball of wax and beyond the scope of this article.

Some peo­ple will blame it on being a per­fec­tion­ist. While per­fec­tion­ism is a chal­lenge in itself, it’s often just another excuse to procrastinate.

The more we focus on try­ing to per­fect what­ever task is at hand, the less we need to con­cen­trate on get­ting it done on time.

(I sub­mit that writer’s block falls in the same cat­e­gory, and prob­a­bly does so more times than we care to admit.)

Nev­er­the­less, I’m a copy­writer for the bet­ter part of two decades, not a psy­chol­o­gist. So my advice here is lim­ited to the more prac­ti­cal workarounds to defeat the most com­mon form of pro­cras­ti­na­tion in our business.

And that’s laziness.

Admit­tedly, we are lazy for dif­fer­ent rea­sons, too. Per­haps we hate the project or the client we’re work­ing with. Per­haps we fail to plan and pri­or­i­tize prop­erly. But again, these are rea­sons, not results.

Once you stop mak­ing excuses and start tak­ing action, even if they’re lit­tle steps, you will be a step closer to your goal. And tak­ing lit­tle steps is a lot bet­ter than tak­ing no steps at all. Which leads me to my next point…

2. Under­stand The Law of Contraction

C. North­cote Parkin­son once said, “Work either expands or con­tracts in order to fill the time avail­able.” This is often referred to as “Parkinson’s Law.”

Also known as the Law of Con­trac­tion (or the Law of Forced Effi­ciency), it means that activ­ity will expand or con­tract to meet its imposed deadline.

In other words, you will either take your time or hurry up depend­ing on the dead­line you have and the time you have at your dis­posal. (Take stu­dents who cram just before exam time, for example.)

If you have seven weeks to write a saleslet­ter, chances are you will take all seven weeks. You will take your time because there’s plenty of it.

But if you have only four days, you will do what you can to get it done within those four days. You will cut out irrel­e­vant tasks, out­source the rest, focus strictly on that let­ter, work dou­ble time, even pull all­nighters if you have to.

Bot­tom line, you will do what­ever it takes.

In fact, I noticed that my best sales let­ters (the ones that pro­duced the best results) were those done work­ing under very tight deadlines.

Why? Because a rapidly advanc­ing dead­line not only kicks me into gear, but also forces me to tune out dis­trac­tions… clear my envi­ron­ment… orga­nize other work around it… ignore the phone and e-​​mail… avoid inter­rup­tions… pri­or­i­tize my tasks… and truly con­cen­trate on the work at hand.

With this height­ened sense of aware­ness and focus, I’m “in the zone” and kick my cre­ativ­ity up a few notches. Like a sponge that’s squeezed under pres­sure, a loom­ing dead­line squeezes out my best ideas, writ­ing and strategies.

Now, I don’t rec­om­mend to pur­pose­fully wait until the last minute. (Admit­tedly, I do that some­times.) But you can still ben­e­fit from this extra boost in cre­ativ­ity and effi­ciency. Here’s how…

3. Break It Down

The idea is to turn a poten­tial night­mare — a dead­line — into your best friend.

The way to do that is to break down a major dead­line into smaller dead­lines (or “mini-​​deadlines”). In other words, the goal is to break down larger projects into smaller, easier-​​to-​​digest, bite-​​sized chunks.

Basi­cally, you cut up the project into smaller pieces and add dead­lines to each piece. This way, it makes each piece more urgent and real.

These mini-​​deadlines also act like mile­stones through­out the course of the project, enabling you to see, at a glance, where you’re sup­posed to be, what you’ve done so far, and what needs to be done at any given time.

As the Con­fu­cian say­ing goes, “A jour­ney of a thou­sand miles begins with a sin­gle step.” But in this case, the jour­ney is not a thou­sand miles but smaller, one-​​mile jour­neys of a thou­sand steps each, so to speak.

Each small dead­line reached is just one step closer to the ulti­mate dead­line. And each step becomes much less intim­i­dat­ing, too.

But the best part is, by plac­ing shorter dead­lines on smaller, bite-​​sized steps, you allow Parkinson’s Law to kick in. The dead­lines become closer and more urgent. And work, there­fore, con­tracts to meet them.

(And it hap­pens almost uncon­sciously, too.)

Plus, each mini-​​deadline is a con­stant reminder that, if you don’t meet the smaller dead­line, you’ll have two or more to con­tend with if you keep waiting.

I per­son­ally dread this “pil­ing on” effect, so doing it this way helps me to kick myself into gear. If I’m late and miss one mini-​​deadline, I force myself to com­plete it so I can start — even hurry up to fin­ish — the next one in line.

How­ever, there’s an impor­tant, more pos­i­tive rea­son in doing it this way, too.

After accom­plish­ing each step, it makes you feel good about your­self know­ing that things are indeed get­ting done and the project is advanc­ing. Which brings me to my next point…

4. Doc­u­ment The Process

Write it down. Don’t just think it up. Make sure it’s printed somewhere.

The rea­son is, cre­at­ing a visual inter­face allows you to see, at a glance, where you are and what you need to do, at any given time — rather than deal­ing with a sin­gle, intim­i­dat­ing dead­line that’s con­stantly men­ac­ing you.

Whether it’s on paper, in your agenda, on a cal­en­dar, or on your com­puter with the help of soft­ware, your mini-​​deadlines visu­ally prod you along the way.

(Per­son­ally, I use Base­Camp as my project man­age­ment software.)

Each mile­stone is like a small reward in itself. Know­ing where you are, how far you’ve gone and what you’ve accom­plished along the way gives you both momen­tum and moti­va­tion to keep going.

Plus, it’s a eas­ier to deal with the small rewards from reach­ing mile­stones than it is with the threat of a larger pun­ish­ment from not reach­ing a deadline.

When you begin, chunk your project into as many small pieces as you wish.

For now, let’s call them “phases” rather than “steps.” Why? Because at first these steps will appear spe­cific to you when in fact they can be bro­ken down even more. Which brings me to the next tip…

5. Be As Spe­cific As Pos­si­ble

Once you’ve bro­ken your project down (i.e., by sep­a­rat­ing your project into phases), go back and try to break it down some more, and denom­i­nate all the steps required for each phase.

Give each step a mini-​​deadline — a spe­cific day on which the task will be car­ried out (rather than a spe­cific time by which it needs to be accomplished).

That way, you instantly know what tasks need to get started on a spe­cific day rather than by when they need to be done. (That’s why I pre­fer to call them “mile­stones.” It’s eas­ier to reach a mile­stone than it is to meet a deadline.)

Remem­ber the pre­vi­ous tip: doc­u­ment it!

It doesn’t mat­ter what you use, whether it’s soft­ware or plain-​​old pen and paper. Just remem­ber that you need to be specific.

A task like “write let­ter” is not enough. Even “writ­ing ini­tial draft.” These are phases, not steps. Each step must be as clear and as spe­cific as possible.

Let me give you an example:

Major project: Write sales let­ter for client.

Major phases: Research, cre­ate rough draft, final­ize ini­tial draft, revi­sions per client, and final draft and delivery.

For this exam­ple, a final dead­line may be, say, one month. The next step is to add a dead­line for each major phase of the project. Using the same exam­ple above:

• Week #1: Research
• Week #2: Cre­ate rough draft
• Week #3: Final­ize ini­tial draft
• Week #4: Revi­sions per client
• End of Week #4: Final draft and delivery

Put dif­fer­ently, you’re break­ing the larger dead­line down into smaller, mini-​​deadlines. (Or as I men­tioned ear­lier, “milestones.”)

Now, break down each phase into smaller, bite-​​sized chunks. For exam­ple, let’s take “research” to be done dur­ing the first week, and break it down some more:

• Day #1: Com­pile client questionnaire
• Day #2: Review and clar­ify answers
• Day #3: Ini­tial prod­uct run-​​through
• Day #4: Inter­view client or principals
• Day #5: Per­form com­pet­i­tive analyses
• Day #6: Brain­storm­ing session

… And so on.

Then you repeat the process for each phase of the project. Above all…

6. Take It One Step At a Time

The above is just one exam­ple and not the example.

Keep in mind that many steps can be accom­plished in the same day, while oth­ers can take sev­eral days. So don’t pigeon­hole your­self. Be flex­i­ble, and be pre­pared to make course cor­rec­tions along the way.

For exam­ple, let’s say you need sev­eral days to come up with a good head­line. If so, then break that down to, say, writ­ing 10–20 head­lines a day, or take an extra day for doing addi­tional research and brain­storm­ing new ones.

Do what you feel com­fort­able with. Don’t over­whelm your­self to the point that fol­low­ing this process becomes a night­mare in itself. It’s only a tool to help you get more done faster. It should never be a bottleneck.

The bot­tom line is, it doesn’t mat­ter how you tackle a project. What mat­ters is that you apply the Law of Con­trac­tion, and break down your project into smaller, easier-​​to-​​digest, bite-​​sized chunks.

That way, you have closer dead­lines to work with, with more man­age­able tasks at hand. You will be focus­ing on putting smaller things into action, one step at a time, rather than on get­ting every­thing done by a spe­cific deadline.

This may take a while the first time, I admit. But do this again and again, even for smaller projects, and you’ll soon get the hang of it.

As Jim Rohn once said, “Life asks us to make mea­sur­able progress in rea­son­able time. That’s why they make those fourth grade chairs so small.”

About the Author

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