One of the main causes of procrastination is analysis paralysis. There’s so much information out there that we can’t get ourselves to stop researching, learning new things, and reading another eBook or another blog post about topics that interest us. Potentially, we could get stuck in the research and learning stage of a project forever.
An illustration of an area in which this happens very often is internet marketing. The amount of information that you can find on internet marketing—both for free and for sale—is mind boggling. Instead of learning a strategy, and then implementing it, a lot of people become information junkies. As soon as they learn one strategy, they run off to read another article which teaches a different strategy. Then they go on to learn a third, a fourth, and even a fifth strategy. This can go on forever.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be knowledgeable on topics that interest us. The problem starts when you fail to do something productive with all the knowledge that you’re acquiring. In order to end analysis paralysis, you need to set a specific amount of time that you’re going to devote to the learning and research stage of your project. Then, set aside another chunk of time to look for examples of how people have applied that knowledge. Finally, establish the amount of time that you’re going to use to implement the strategy yourself.
For example, you could decide to spend five hours learning how to create a mini-site on a niche topic. Then, spend five hours looking for examples of mini-sites so that you can see how others have set up their mini-sites. Finally, set aside ten hours to construct your own mini-site. The process is therefore the following:
- · Apply 25% of your time to learning.
- Apply 25% of your time to analyzing how others have applied the knowledge that you’ve just acquired.
- Apply 50% of the time to the execution, or application, of what you’ve learned.
Once you know what’s working, you can do more of it. And once you’ve identified what’s not working, you can start looking for ways to fix it. Then, simply apply the process once again: come up with a new strategy, execute your strategy, analyze your feedback, and then look for ways to correct any new mistakes you may have made. By following this process, analysis paralysis will soon be a thing of the past for you.
If you want more information on how to stop procratinating, visit my Squidoo lens, Procrastination and Morita Therapy. In addition, visit How to Stop Procrastinating.