Combat procrastination with Office

I like to log tasks and track my activities in Office apps, whether it's building a schedule in Excel, converting emails into tasks and reminders in Outlook, or even jotting notes in OneNote.

This helps my productivity in a few ways - it helps me break down larger tasks into smaller ones and keeps me organized, to be sure. But I recently noticed something else, maybe a little less obvious: Tasks that I'm inclined to put off get cleared faster when I start working on them, even in small ways. It might be as simple as marking a sub-task complete by changing the text to strikethrough or refreshing some dates in a calendar. Once I'm in the spreadsheet or Word document to perform even a menial action, I'm more easily immersed in the task and will start to dive into other aspects of it.

And the next thing I know, it's done!

Is Office the antidote for procrastination? It certainly can be. So create those tracking spreadsheets or whatever tool helps you stay on top of your day. It may boost your productivity in unexpected ways.

Suzanne