A couple of weeks back, I got a call from an advisor who found himself way behind on contacting clients, felt overwhelmed at the prospect of tackling this and was paralyzed by procrastination as a result.

We all suffer from procrastination - the only difference is the magnitude of the problem.

For advisors looking to overcome procrastination, here's the three-step solution I suggested to this advisor.Step One:

At the end of each day, identify two things you've been procrastinating about.

Each should be something that can be addressed in fifteen minutes or less - a prospect or client to call, email to write or admin problem to resolve.

If the issue can't be dealt with in fifteen minutes, then carve out a fifteen minute slice to at least start.

Step Two:

Having identified the two issues, write them down on top of your to-do list, in your day-timer or on a piece of paper.

Then carve out 30 minutes in your calendar on the first free spot the next morning - ideally the very first thing in the morning. If you don't have thirty minutes available, then you'll need to come in early to get some other things done to free up the time to address this.

Step Three

Resist the temptation to avoid tackling the two issues. Resolve to deal with them - if you haven't tackled them by lunch time, then put off going for lunch until you've addressed them.

I got a call early this week from this advisor thanking me for my suggestion. He'd put my idea into practice - while he still had clients to call, using this approach he'd begun knocking overdue client calls off his to-do list (and in fact had increased the number of these calls to four a day). As a result, he feels much better coming into the office and his overall productivity and enthusiasm level is a lot higher.

Lots of us are feeling overwhelmed these days. If you can relate to this, consider using the two item a day, three step approach that worked for this advisor.