Effective time management greatly depends on inner motivation and the ability to cope with procrastination. So define intrinsic motivation factors to organize work and prioritize what you need to do first. Assess time necessary to dedicate to a certain task based on your personal qualities.

Prioritize Tasks

To start with prioritizing activities, it is necessary to categorize them as follows:

• Activities of top priority and urgent tasks;
• Not so important activities;
• Unimportant tasks that do not require immediate attention.

Based on this model, do tasks starting from the most important one to the least important with the respective assessment of the time necessary for each.

Categorize Work Based on Its Difficulty

Categorization involves:

• Difficult tasks that require a lot of mental or physical work;
• Easy tasks that can be performed with less efforts.

Approach the model in two different ways:

• You may first do easy tasks and get positive emotions associated with successful coping results. Such can be further directed at the most difficult task as you will feel motivated to do it considering the previous outcomes.
• You may start with a difficult task, but only if you can assess your skills and the time you need to spend on this job. Doing it properly and within the planned time, the individual also gets motivation for further task performance.

Define Intrinsic Motivation to Overcome Procrastination

Such categorization and prioritization enable to overcome procrastination. It is greatly dependant on limbic zone activity in the brain responsible for emotions. Particularly, it affects person’s intrinsic motivation more than the zone responsible for rational reasoning.

Delaying some job till the last moment, you get emotions due to the approaching deadline and gain inner motivation to do work immediately.

Thus, determine inner motivating factors that can ignite emotions to make the brain concentrate on work.

Therefore, for successful time management, overcome procrastination through positive emotions at the beginning of work and inner motivation.

Moreover, set your own short-term deadlines for each part of the task and after its successful performance get a cup of coffee.

Thus, determining the level of task complexity, prioritirizing based on importance, and finding small motivating factors (after each part of task fulfillment), like a cup of coffee, can help associate work with positive outcomes and facilitate time management.

What are your inner motivating factors?