Procrastination is a bad habit that many of us have developed over time - whether it be video games, the Internet or reading, basically any task that you perform that delays you from completing other, possibly more important tasks. Researchers have found that procrastination leads to depression, insomnia and an entire host of other issues that can even be life threatening!

I am guilty of procrastination myself, so these are four tips that I am using to break the cycle of procrastination and move toward a better life overall.

1. Stop lying to yourself! Don’t try to tell yourself, “I’ll do it later.” Do it NOW! When you tell yourself lies, you then make up more lies to cover the original set of lies and it just snowballs.
2. Set realistic goals and work toward them. One of my goals this week is to format my music collection into a easy-to-navigate file system. I’ve set the goal, now I can work toward it.
3. Give yourself rewards for a job well done. If you complete a task by your self-imposed deadline, reward yourself! It doesn’t have to be something expensive or even a tangible item - give yourself 5 extra minutes online, or have a piece of your favorite candy!
4. Stick to your deadlines! One of my most favorite cheats is to change the deadline repeatedly, so I can continue to procrastinate. It sounds like fun in the beginning, but I have chores and things-to-do that I’ve put off for months that way.

Do you have any tips for beating procrastination? Let’s hear it in the comments!

photo credit: terin.

Shareaholic is a Firefox plugin that gives you the ability to share on social networks, bookmarking sites and via email any websites that you come across and want to share. It supports over 21 different social networking sites, bookmarking services and has neat features that will have you using Shareaholic daily!

As you can see from the screenshot, once you install Shareaholic into your Firefox (Flock and Songbird are also compatible) browser, the plugin will insert the Shareaholic button in your Firefox toolbar, and upon clicking the button, a dropdown menu will appear. If the site has already been saved or Dugg, you will see this information, too! I love checking out how popular a website is, so this is a great addition to the plugin.

Shareaholic is easily customizable, so you can add and remove social networks and bookmarking to your heart’s content.

My only complaint is that the “Email this Page” feature forces you to use Bzzter social networking site to email links to friends and family members, but if you set Gmail as your default email client in Firefox and couple it with the GmailThis! bookmarklet, you’ll be able to send links easily.

Does having a large number of unread messages in your Gmail inbox drive you nuts?

A quick, surefire solution is to mark all items as read; sounds easy, but what about emails in other folders (labels), too?

First, perform a quick search for all unread messages (is:unread); then press “Select: All”.

Now, press “Select all conversations that match this search”.

And finally, press “Mark all as read” in the dropdown menu “More Actions”.

Now, all of your unread items are now marked “read”!