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Do you have a bad habit of procrastinating? What are some books about procrastination to help you get to work?
Procrastination is a hard habit to overcome and can interfere with your personal and professional life. If you want to get more work done without getting distracted, you should check out these 13 books on procrastination.
Below we’ve compiled a list of the best productivity books that you shouldn’t put off reading.
The Top Books That Tackle Procrastination
Do you ever hold off on completing important tasks? After reading the books below, you’ll be able to tackle procrastination like a pro.
These books specifically tackle the topic of procrastination, with experts weighing in on how to defeat the hesitation habit.
Procrastination prevents us from living a fulfilling life, yet we still do it—why? In Procrastination, psychologists Lenora Yuen and Jane Burka argue that we procrastinate to experience short-term relief from our fear of working on certain tasks. Fortunately, they claim you can beat procrastination and learn to live a more fulfilling life if you accept reality’s constraints and learn healthier ways to manage your fears. In this book, you’ll learn how to…
- Identify the fears that lead you to procrastinate
- Reflect on how your biology, circumstances, and self-esteem affect your procrastination
- Learn to set and achieve realistic goals
- Better control how you manage your emotions and time
There isn’t enough time in the day to meet all of the work and personal responsibilities you’re swamped with, let alone keep up with email, social media, and all the things you’ve been meaning to read. In Eat That Frog, business consultant Brian Tracy says the answer is to identify your most important task—the one with the greatest consequences—and do that first each day. It’s like eating a frog: when you have a big challenge, or frog to eat, it’s best to get it out of the way first; everything after that will be easier by comparison. Based on this insight, Tracy offers a list of practical tips for improved productivity and success.
Why do we put off the things that matter most to us, even when we know that doing so makes us unhappy in the long run? According to psychologist and productivity coach Neil Fiore, the problem isn’t that we’re lazy—it’s that procrastination is a symptom of the fear and anxiety we sometimes feel about our work. In his 1988 book The Now Habit, Fiore explains what procrastination is, why we do it, and most importantly, how to avoid it.
The Now Habit combines psychological insights and time management tips designed to eliminate procrastination by lowering our resistance to work. Fiore promises that if you follow his system, you’ll get more done while enjoying a more relaxed and balanced life.
When you’re trying to be productive, are you easily distracted by wandering thoughts or urges? Do you wish you could focus better, spending hours more per day driving toward your most important goals? Deep Work teaches you how to develop your focus and resist distractions. Focus is like a mental muscle – you need to structure training sessions and push yourself to your mental limit to increase your focus capacity. Implement the strategies from Deep Work, and you’ll be more productive than you’ve ever been.
Many of us wish that we were more productive in our professional and personal lives. However, becoming productive can be a struggle. It can be difficult to know where to start. Which elements of our behavior need to change for our productivity to increase?
In Smarter Faster Better, Charles Duhigg argues that becoming more productive isn’t about working longer hours or constantly pushing yourself to do more. Instead, it’s about making wise choices in certain areas of your life.
Duhigg discusses eight principles that he believes are crucial to improving productivity. Six of these principles relate to improving your productivity. The final two principles address how you can improve the productivity of an organization.
Books to Increase Your Productivity
One of the best things you gain out of defeating procrastination is productivity. The feeling of accomplishment you get after completing a task is incredibly rewarding, and procrastination only works to delay.
While these books don’t specifically focus on procrastination, the authors’ advice and perspectives help you be more productive.
Most people think of willpower as a virtue, an admirable trait that we strive for but don’t always achieve. But science tells a different story. Willpower—the ability to exercise self-control when you need it—is an instinct that’s wired into our brains.
Yet it seems like willpower vanishes at crucial moments, like when your coworker shows up with a box of donuts. To harness your innate willpower, you need to understand what factors make you give up your self-control. In The Willpower Instinct, Stanford University psychology professor Kelly McGonigal details how our natural willpower gets compromised by stress, distraction, lack of sleep and exercise, and a host of other factors. Using the latest psychology and neuroscience research, she offers strategies to help us defeat procrastination, control cravings, and achieve our goals.
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