The blog

Some things are easy to pro­cras­ti­nate. It is both under­stand­able and there can def­i­nite­ly be good rea­son for doing so.
But, here are four things you real­ly should get to right away, as soon as pos­si­ble, and you will soon find out why.

Why these four? Well, all of them rep­re­sent painful expe­ri­ences, which came at a high cost that I have gained over the years.
By pre­sent­ing you this struc­tur­al tip, I sin­cere­ly hope that you will not have to make the same bit­ter mis­takes as I have.

The Gang of Four

1. Book train- /flight-tick­ets & hotel room. If you book ear­ly, you stand a bet­ter chance at get­ting a favor­able price. The prob­a­bil­i­ty increas­es that you will get a seat in a depar­ture which suits you opti­mal­ly. And is it not nice to stay at the hotel which is clos­est to where you are going? Am I right to say that you prob­a­bly trans­port your­self enough any­way? Book your tick­ets in time in order to cre­ate the most con­ve­nient itin­er­ary pos­si­ble. It is bet­ter to be flex­i­ble and open to resched­ul­ing or can­celling of the tick­et rather than mak­ing the orig­i­nal book­ing last minute.
2. Send over the mate­r­i­al you promised some­one at the meet­ing you just left (that is, mate­ri­als you already have eas­i­ly accessible).First of all, it gives a ter­rif­ic impres­sion. Besides, it will be done in no time, leav­ing you time to pre­pare your­self for the next meet­ing. If the recip­i­ent needs it to move on with the tasks she took respon­si­bil­i­ty of com­plet­ing at the meet­ing, she will be eter­nal­ly grate­ful to have it on her desk soon­er rather than later.
3. Sched­ule sep­a­rate slots of time to do to-do-tasks which need to be com­plet­ed before … Imme­di­ate­ly after defin­ing the task that has a ​“sharp” dead­line, sched­ule time in the agen­da to com­plete it. Oth­er­wise the cal­en­dar tends fill up quick­ly with appoint­ments and you there­fore risk hav­ing to sit up late at night to do what actu­al­ly had the high­est pri­or­i­ty dur­ing the day.
4. Resched­ule the meet­ing you already know will need to be resched­uled (even if it feels awk­ward that it is the sec­ond time you post­pone it). Do it right away, so that the like­li­hood that you will find a new time for the appoint­ment soon increas­es and so that time isn’t lost for noth­ing. Do it imme­di­ate­ly, because it will feel even more embar­rass­ing and awk­ward the clos­er to the appoint­ed time you call to reschedule.

No agony

If you do these tasks and tasks sim­i­lar to them right away, you will spare your­self plen­ty of unnec­es­sary anguish and agony, delays and hard over-time work. 

Some of these tasks tend to gen­er­ate oth­er awk­ward tasks if they are ini­ti­at­ed too late (a late resched­ul­ing of an urgent meet­ing could for exam­ple cause a fur­ther resched­ul­ing of a meet­ing with low­er priority). 

​“Domi­no effect” is the phrase we are look­ing for.

How do you do it?

What is your way of always being one step ahead of your­self in your plan­ning and sched­ul­ing? Help me and oth­ers by shar­ing your best tip here on the blog.