We all procrastinate at some point in our career but most of us don’t realize that we have been doing it until someone points it out, or when we (finally) get in trouble for it.

Procrastination, perhaps, has never been the direct cause of someone’s failure with a project but the resulting impact from it may be: poor planning or the lack of any planning may cause the project to be half done, pulling an all-nighter to finish the job may be bad for health, or it could lead to problems within the team tasked with doing the job.

It’s a sort of deferment, which creates or leads to all sorts of problems, and you end up losing the trust people put in you to finish the job. Why should you risk facing a tiger on a prowl, when you can easily capture it and put it in a cage? Or even better, tame the beast within.

Recommended Reading: 5 Time Management Tips For Bloggers

In this article, we look at 7 ways to stop procrastinating on the job.

1. Pomodoro technique

It has been revealed that the human brain has the tendency to lose interest if they work over long periods of time on a task without any reward. This need for instant gratification is manipulated in video games, for instance, crossing a pit stop lets you level up, giving you an instant bonus thus rewarding you for staying on in the game. You do not procrastinate in games.

You can apply that self-regulating method in your work as well. The Pomodoro technique says that individuals should use clocks to work for a certain period of time, and then reward themselves with a break. You can look out for Promodoro apps if you need a bit of help from handy tools for your desktop or smartphone.

2. Realising the effects of procrastinating

Another way to stop procrastinating is to really dwell on the effects of when you do procrastinate. Procrastination can result in the loss of jobs, or large financial losses, and even lead to you falling to acquire future projects. If you keep this in mind, it may just help stop you from delaying your tasks and duties the next time you have the urge to procrastinate.

You can try to set milestones for your work to ensure that things get done a bit at a time, rather than lumped up in one overwhelming shot all at once.

3. Enjoy our Achievements

It feels great to achieve something and there is no reason not to break that feeling down in smaller ‘bites’. Create a list of things you should be doing, set deadlines for it and when you have done them, scratch them off the list. Now, doesn’t that feel good?

You can make use of productivity tools such as Remember the Milk, Any.do, Toodledo or a regular egg-timer and notepad to remember your deadlines. Over time, you will be able to learn how to be more productive, work faster or work less for better results.

4. Deal With It When It’s Small

Many focus on bigger tasks and leave smaller tasks to be completed later, which leads to procrastination. These small tasks eventually pile up and don’t get completed on time. In essence, it’s these small things that could have been done and settled fast, usually on the spot right after the instructions are delivered.

But such tasks are sometimes overlooked, believed to be a small matter until it grows too big to be contained or to be completed in time. Don’t leave it unattended if you can, no matter how insignificant you think it is.

5. Do not work until you feel exhausted

Human psychology suggests that if you are exhausted and don’t have anything pending in your head, then your mind tends to wander off course from the task at hand. In other words, you can get distracted very easily when you are tired.

Follow the signs you get from your body and start each new task afresh if possible. Taking a short break with non-taxing activities like reading the paper or listening to light music while sipping on some coffee can do wonders to revitalize your energy bar.

Read Also: How To Balance Your Work Life

6. Use the power of motivation

Often employees fail to remember the basis of their work, which could lead to procrastination. Your business has a role and your work has a purpose. Do you reinvent your personal goals with the task at hand? If you can do that then you are taking the right steps to strengthening yourself.

If you find it hard to get up in the morning to get to work, then something is wrong. If it is hard to even get started, procrastinating is the next stage. A lack of zeal at work may require some reflection on your part.

You may need to question your role in the organization, if you need some form of motivation as in a new role, a new project or a new manager (yikes!). Restructure your engagement and responsibilities at the job to avoid procrastination.

7. Shun off temptations

Temptations are real hindrances. It takes your attention away from work and everyone has their own private list of sinful temptations: the TV, a phone call, a game or a texting partner, Facebook (the usual suspect) etc. Identifying and keeping yourself away from them will help you to overcome procrastination on the job.

You may choose to cut yourself off from the Internet when you are designing, writing or sketching. Alternatively you can find a room to yourself to get away from physical disturbances offline like noise, your children or from phone calls. At the end of the day, it depends on your willpower to say no to ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’.

Recommended Reading: 10 Tips To Make ‘Working From Home’ Work For You

More

Here are a few more posts on tools you can use to help you manage or save time:

• Time-Tracking Mac Apps For Freelancers – Best Of
• 50 Time Saving Firefox Add-Ons

What are your methods to keep your mind on the job and on the deadline?

CSS3 Transition is one of the great additions in CSS3. It allows us to apply transitional changing effects to CSS rules. If you are already familiar with the syntax, you will see that we need to specify the timing function or the transition speed.

There are four predefined timing functions we can use, they are ease, ease-in, ease-out, ease-in-out and linear.

But, one thing that most people overlook in these functions is that they are essentially based on the Bezier curve.

• Demo

Bezier Curve

The Bezier curve is a commonly used curve model in computer graphics. If you have been working with Vector Graphic Editors like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape, you will find this curve model when you are drawing with the pen tool. This curve is formed with four points as illustrated in the following figure:

Thus, in CSS3 Transition, the cubic-bezier function is defined within this syntax:

 cubic-bezier(P0,P1,P2,P3); 

It is worth noting that each point in this Cubic-bezier only allows the values from 0 to 1. Alright, let’s return to the timing functions in CSS3 transition we have mentioned earlier and see how they are actually formed in the Cubic-bezier curve.

ease, this is the default timing function in CSS3 Transition and in cubic-bezier format it can be translated as follows:

 cubic-bezier(0.25,0.1,0.25,1); 

linear, using linear timing function, the speed will be steady from start to end and in cubic-bezier format it is translated, as follows:

 cubic-bezier(0,0,1,1) 

ease-in, using this timing function, the animation will start slowly and then gain more acceleration and get steady until the end of the duration. In cubic-bezier format it can be translated into:

 cubic-bezier(0.42, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0) 

ease-out, this timing function simply does the opposite to ease-in. The speed will start steady and fast, then just about the end of duration it will slow down. In the cubic-bezier format, this can be translated into:

 cubic-bezier(0.0, 0.0, 0.58, 1.0) 

ease-in-out, this timing function is simply a combination between ease-in and ease-out, the animation starts slow, accelerate in the middle, then ends slow. In cubic-bezier this can be translated, as follows.

 cubic-bezier(0.42, 0.0, 0.58, 1.0) 

Creating Custom Speed

Using Cubic-bezier function, we are able to create custom speed. But one of the main constraint of defining animation speed with Cubic-bezier function is that it is not that intuitive, and we cannot see instantly how the speed is moving. Luckily, there is one tool that we can use to help us out, named cubic-bezier.com.

This tool is created by Lea Verou, also known as the CSS Guru. It has the Bezier curve that you can move around, and it will instantly generate the values for you. We can also show the transition movement and compare the speed.

This example shows how we can utilize cubic-bezier function to set a rocket speed.

You can view the demo and download the source from these links. We hope you enjoyed it.

• Demo
• Download Source Code

When we think about speakers, we imagine huge, bulky, unsightly speakers. Now, what do you think of a speaker that is portable and yet an integrated sound system all the same?

Three students from Stanford University have created and designed Tiptop speaker, a speaker that functions as a portable speaker and an integrated sound system.

Tiptop speaker is a bluetooth-enabled speaker, allowing it to work with any Bluetooth-enabled device. As soon as you take it out of the box, Tiptop is ready to be used. There are no wires or buttons involved here. You control the volume from your device.

The creators have taken the space factor into consideration while designing Tiptop. Instead of the regular atop a table, a cabinet or the floor, Tiptop is optimizing the unused space that you have in your home – the corner of your walls. It will fit perfectly on the corner of your walls, just mount it up there with the power of magnets.

Yes, the mount as built in magnets so you can stick Tiptop to it. Since the mount has magnets, you can even hang your keys there if you’re taking your Tiptop out with you for portable use.

Tiptop has Bluetooth 3.0 built in and a range of 30-feet. A rechargeable lithium ion-battery resides in the speaker, giving you up to 10 hours of playback on a single charge. Think of it as a smartphone device rather than speakers of yonder years. You can also charge it via micro USB, as well as transfer firmware.

The creators of Tiptop needs $215,000 to produce Tiptop on Kickstarter. You can be an owner of Tiptop by backing this project for $175 on Kickstater. As of now, Tiptop only ships within US. At the time of this writing, Tiptop mostly ships within the US but it does ship overseas for a $199 pledge, a special offer reserved for international early birds only. The estimated delivery is on Jan 2014.