Put an End to Analysis Paralysis and Stop Procrastinating

We live in the Information Age. This means that practically all of the information you could possibly need is at your fingertips, twenty-four hours a day. The negative side of this easy accessibility to knowledge and information is overload. You can easily become overwhelmed by the amount of information that's available, and end up spending all of your time gathering, studying, organizing, and reviewing the information, instead of getting things done.

A lot of people procrastinate due to something called analysis paralysis. This involves over-analyzing or over-thinking a situation, to the point in which a decision is never made or the necessary action is never taken. This article will show you how to stop being overwhelmed by the amount of information that exists on any particular subject, overcome analysis paralysis, and stop procrastinating on the important things that you need to get done.

In order to overcome analysis paralysis you're going to apply the 25-25-50 formula. This formula states that you're going to spend 25% of your time gathering and studying information, you're going to spend 25% of your time analyzing how others have successfully applied the information you've being reading about, and you're going to spend 50% of your time acting. That is, you're going to do the following:

Decide how much time you're going to devote to a project. Suppose that you want to start a blog. You've decided to apply 40 hours to this project.
You're going to devote 25% of your time--in this case, 10 hours--to gathering information on the subject of blogging, reading it, and taking any necessary notes.
Then, you're going to devote 25% of your time to reading other blogs to see how these bloggers have applied the information that you just read about. Again, in this example you would spend 10 hours doing this (because 10 is 25% of 40). Needless to say, you should read successful blogs to see how those who are succeeding are applying the principles and ideas you've been reading about.
Spend 50% of the time putting the ideas you read about into action. You're going to spend 20 hours doing all of the following: choosing a niche, choosing a blogging platform, choosing a domain name, choosing a hosting provider, purchasing a domain name and hosting, choosing and uploading a theme, uploading the plugins you've decided to use on your blog, and writing about five blog post.

Then, when the 40 hours are up, you're going to publish your blog. The next thing you're going to do is to take a look at any feedback that you receive. Visit other blogs and leave comments. Twitter about your blog posts and bookmark them on Reddit, Facebook, and so on. You should soon have some visitors who will read your blog posts and leave comments. What are their reactions? Do they come back when you publish other blog posts? Do they share your posts on social media?

Start analyzing any feedback that you get about your blog and come up with a plan on how to make improvements. Then, make the necessary modifications. Continue following this pattern:

Take action.
Notice the results that are created by the action you took.
Decide on what improvements or modifications need to be made.
Start making those improvements and modifications.

Because you're not sitting in an armchair simply reading more and more about blogging, but, instead, you have a published blog out there, you're going to be acting within a spiral of increasing knowledge. Every time that you act, you'll have more first-hand knowledge about what works and what doesn't. Continue making modifications until your blog is a success.

You can use the 25-25-50 formula in any area in which you've been avoiding getting started on doing what needs to be done because you keep telling yourself that you need just a little more knowledge on the subject matter. The people who get ahead in this world are the ones who get out there and execute their ideas. Follow the advice contained in this article and you'll be able to stop putting off taking action because you're overwhelmed by the amount of information that's out there.

I Recommend

What important task or project have you been procrastinating on? Whether it's starting a blog, writing a novel, going back to school, decluttering your home, or starting an exercise program, my ebook, "Make It Happen! A Workbook for Overcoming Procrastination and Getting the Right Things Done", will show you how to get started and see the task or project through to completion.