Some of you have big ideas, and you’re just not executing them. If this describes you, you might find that working in a sprint is worth trying. Here's what you need to know to live life six months at a time: 

In his wildly popular TED talk, Tim Urban makes a keen observation. He explains that there are two types of procrastination. One with a deadline and one, without.

• With a deadline: The report you’re supposed to submit by the end of the month.
• Without a deadline: Starting to work out, learning a new skill, building your startup, etc.

We often do complete the projects that have a deadline. We might start late and do low-quality work. But since there is a deadline with an associated punishment, we tend to finish it on time. But with other life-goals like starting to workout or working on your startup, we delay for years before the frustration builds up and we start. And for some people, they never start. Because there’s no sense of urgency. So, the idea here is to build a false sense of urgency. A false deadline.

One approach to get those long-term projects started and finished is to live life in sprints of 6 months (or shorter, but give yourself enough time to really see progress.)

At the beginning of every sprint, choose a set of goals to be completed by the end of the sprint. Then, reverse engineer a plan to figure out what you need to do each month and even each week, in order to accomplish your sprint goal. Each week, break that into a daily task list. Hold yourself accountable to your daily task list, and re-evaluate as you go, making only minor changes to the plan. If you stick to the plan, you'll start to gain momentum and you'll be too close to your end goal to start procrastinating again.

Give this a try if you have goals and ideas without deadlines. A sense of urgency and an outline for how to accomplish something might just be the missing link between where you are professionally and where you want to be.

Another tip: Join a flexible coworking space, where you can focus on your work and even network with other entrepreneurs. Our space in downtown Salt Lake City has flexible options whether you need to use the space for just a few hours, part time, or you need 24/7 access.

Source information: The main idea was paraphrased from of a section of an article, “How I Learned to Suck at Procrastination,” by Akshad Singi, on Medium.com.