This report is to summarise the completion of the final project for Arman Choudhry’s class on How to Overcome Procrastination, Improve Self-Discipline, Increase Productivity & Time Management course.

One of the biggest moments of procrastination that I faced at my job was calling members in my congregation who had not been coming to church for a while to follow up with them. Upon reflection, some of the reasons for my procrastination were:

1. I am not someone who generally likes to talk on the phone (this may be due to neurodivergence)

2. There is an awkwardness to reaching out to people that I do not know in a cold calling type situation (perhaps this is residual trauma from working in call centres)

In order to activate the “chain mind,” what I focused on was the why of why was I doing the task. We are a smaller congregation whose membership has been getting older; many of our former active members have mobility issues that do not allow them to come to church anymore. They are still interested in being involved with the church, but they are in need of a minister who can come to them and offer them personalised attention. By fostering these connections among long-time members who have helped to support the church in the past, it helps to connect them to the church and makes them feel like the church continues to support them; this helps them to see reasons for continuing to pledge to the church or to think about the church when they are considering legacy giving, which means the church can continue to thrive and have an operating budget.

What I realised as I began to tackle the procrastination that I had over calling people was the importance of the productivity zone. Often times, I do most of my tasks from my office; as I am a naturally disorganised person, this space is not always conducive to productivity, especially with a task that I have been procrastinating. The focus on this helped to get me into a better mindset and allow me to be more cognisant of how I can be more productive.

The most helpful things was the Timer & Stopwatch example. By breaking down tasks into a rough estimate of approximately how long they will take, it allowed me to see that tasks were not as overwhelming as I was making them out to be and were not so prohibitive in terms of time. I especially resonated with the bonus tip about doing tasks that are five minutes or less right now to help get me used to being productive and overcoming procrastination. I feel like this is the biggest takeaway for me as I work on overcoming procrastination. 

Although this class was very short, it contained a wealth of actionable steps and was presented in such a way as I am already beginning to see results with regard to overcoming procrastination and increasing productivity.