How to Get Things Done

Written by Heather Lawrence.  Media by Sara Dawson.

Have you ever been in the group of people who tend to procrastinate? I know that I have, and I tend to procrastinate all the time. Honestly, I was procrastinating a bit with this blog but this is an example as to what extent I will procrastinate with when it comes to homework. With me in my senior year of college, I need to start with helping myself stay organized and get things done as I finish out and even through the rest of my life.

There are so many different techniques that people can use to stop procrastinating and I have looked at a lot of them. I decided to try out some of them to better my organization skills and to get things done. The first type of technique that I tried out was “Inbox Zero”. This is where people go through their email and make it to where their inbox has absolutely nothing in it. I have been using inbox.google.com and this has been such a great thing to have. You can group your emails into different categories. One is “done,” which is when you say that you are done with the email. You can also reschedule the email to have it show up again either a couple hours later or even the next day. You need to make sure that you empty your inbox every day. Trust me, you will feel good once you do!

Another way that you can get things done is to look up some life hacks. These types of hacks have been rising in popularity because they are making life so much easier. On lifehacks.org, they have a total of 50 hacks that you can use in your life. One that caught my eye was #16, and that was to slow down.

What this means is to take time to yourself, and sometimes that is so hard to do.Who has such a hard time just sitting back and relaxing for one day? I know that I have a rough time taking a break and trying to balance the rush that your work or projects may have. People seem to think that they never have any sort of free time, but they should just take a lazy day and focus on themselves for once.

Who always has a hard time saying no to someone when they ask you to do something? I do from time to time. I know that I have things to get done, but I also have people asking me to do this or that. I end up saying yes because they are good friends and they are asking me to help them out with something.

Whenever I do this, it causes me so much stress and then I have no time to do all the other things that I have planned for that day. In the end, it’s good to try and say no sometimes when you know you have other things that you have planned for the day or even the week. Does this mean that you are a bad person if you tell them no? Absolutely not! Saying no to something when you’re already busy is knowing your limit. What should we do when we have this problem? We need to learn to be direct with people and just say “No, I can’t do that,” and it’s really that simple! We can even practice saying the word no to people.

Overall, I have learned so much after trying out a few of these. The reason why we need to get things done in our lives is so that we can feel better afterward. After we get everything done with, we can truly sit back, relax, and enjoy ourselves. I know when I did the Inbox Zero or even took a break, it did help out tremendously. I think when we get things done, we feel so much better that we will continue to do this throughout our lives. I know that I will continue to do the techniques that I have learned while writing this blog.