5 tips for beating procrastination in teams. I’ll add a few more later

Sometime in September, a couple of nerds and I started working on something simple.

See, we had an idea of changing the way commerce was done on social media — a way to allow vendors collect payment easily for their products (digital or physical).

Like any other glorious idea, it needed to be worked on, and we thought we were ready. We were a team of 5 product builders — 2 backend devs, 1 front-end dev, 1 UI/UX designer and a business manager. It was the ultimate geek squad and you’d think it wouldn’t take long to build a simple app.

Fast forward to about 8 weeks later, we just finished rounding up on what was barely good enough to pass for a version 1.0 of the app. One of the things that really kicked us was procrastination. Looking back now, I can recommend a few points on how to avoid the trap of procrastination and ship your products… or dreams faster.

Keep checklists

Having checklists shows you clearly what you have done and what you have left to do. Try not to have too many items on your checklist so you don’t get demotivated when you don’t achieve them all.

Take out some time to plan

Going ahead to build without a clear cut plan, almost always confuses you and your teammates, and invariably leaves room for you to say, “Nah, I’ll get to this after we figure it out”.

Take time to review

Reviewing performance helps you and your teammates know who is slacking. You don’t want to be known as a perpetual slacker, so you most likely will get to work faster. Also reviewing often helps you address blockers, which would generally make you work faster. (We started doing daily reviews)

Have the goal in front of you, and in your mind all the time

The goal isn’t the app, the goal is the solution you’re providing. And if that doesn’t motivate you, just stop trying. Do something else.

Just do it! Eat that frog!

This is easier than it sounds. You have something you have to get done? Just say to your mind, and let it say back to you; “Let’s just do it”. That’s what I said right before I started writing this, and look, I’m almost done.

That’s all I have for now. It’s not an ‘absolute truth’ list, and I don’t expect it to work for everyone, but it worked for us, and I bet it would work for a whole lot of other people. You can share your own thoughts on procrastination too.

We built Selar.co to help small businesses accept online payments from their customers so you can stop procrastinating and start that business