My Interview About Procrastination

I was honoured to be asked to do an interview with BS Buster from Streetlessons.com last week.

If you do not know about BS Buster then you SHOULD, he is a no nonsense, straight talking entrepreneur who tells it like it is.

He is doing a guide to “Not being a loser”, and one of the sections will be on how to combat procrastination. Here is our brief interview:

INTERVIEW BETWEEN BS BUSTER AND DEAN HUNT

Procrastination is something that even our guest writer Dean Hunt has problems with. So if procrastination is for losers then how has Dean been so successful?

I spoke to Dean about this in a recent interview about his procrastination problems:

BS: Deano, today I am discussing how procrastination is for losers, how do you feel about that?
Dean: haha, I am dealing with it a lot better than I was three years ago, but it is a daily battle.
BS: It sounds like an ilness for losers to me.
Dean: Actually many people don’t think it is an illness, but it very much is. It is a mental illness that can ruin lives. I am dealing with it now though, and although it will always be a part of me, I can control it much better than I used to be able to.
BS: Isn’t it just a fancy word for “lazy loser”?
Dean: To some people it is, but there is a lot more to it than that. For me I believe it was a fear of failure related issue, so now I push myself daily to step outside of my comfort zone. I am lucky because I work online, and it is easier to push your limits from behind a pc screen.
BS: What are your tips to stop being lazy…. er… i mean a procrastinator?
Dean: The key is to break your day up into 30 minute segments, try and plan what you are going to do for those time slots, but be realistic about it. I also use tools like netvibes.com and workhack.com to help me.
BS: In what way do you use those sites?
Dean: I used to surf a lot of blogs and forums on a regular basis. I would be doing some work and then say “I will just check this forum”, before I knew it I had checked 10 forums and posted at all of them, 1 hour had passed and I had lost focus completely. If you do that 3 or 4 times per day then you are losing 20 hours per week. I use Netvibes to check the blogs and forums for me, and I use Workhack.com to keep my daily goals.
BS: Do you think you would be even more successful if you were not a procrastinator?
Dean: Probably not! Procrastinators tend to be fantasists, and therefore I feel that a huge % of my creative ideas come from procrastination. One spark of creative genius will always achieve more than months of hard work.
BS: Thanks for taking the time to do this interview, I was expecting you to procrastinate about it for months.
Dean: haha, I now find it is better to get things out of the way ASAP, the longer you leave them the worse they get. But it is always a pleasure to speak to you.
BS: Keep up the good work Dean.
Dean: You too you tough bastard.

You can see all of BS Busters no nonsense articles at: No BS Business Advice