Similar to the widely used orthogonal frequency division multiplexing systems, generalized frequency division multiplexing suffers from a high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). In this letter, we propose a data-independent precoder to minimize the variance of the instantaneous power (IP), subject to the constraint of unchanged average IP as a means for PAPR reduction. Simulation results show that the proposed precoder can reduce PAPR without any increase in out of band radiation or bit error rate degradation. Compared with the existing solutions, the proposed technique provides an improved PAPR performance. Furthermore, an efficient implementation of the proposed precoding technique is introduced. A thorough computational complexity analysis of different PAPR reduction methods is also presented in this letter.