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© Jacquie Wise – Coach, Counsellor, Speaker, Trainer and Author, specialising in personal, professional and spiritual development
AAAGH! The Year's Half Gone!
Like me, you might have been glancing through your diary…and suddenly taken a second look. A long hard look. JUNE! Already? How far have you progressed with your goals for this year? Maybe you still intend to do the same things you were thinking of doing five years ago. It's not uncommon!
If you are an arch procrastinator, all is not lost—yet.
First of all, let's understand the main reasons for procrastination. Once you know why you are putting something off, it will help you gain control. It's not always as obvious as it might seem. Avoidance boils down to two reasons: Discomfort Dodging, and Self-Doubt.
Discomfort-dodging is the reason you avoid going to the gym, or even to a party. You know you'll love it when you get there, but it's the discomfort of peeling yourself out of the armchair that stops you.
Sometimes, we put off a task because either all of it, or a small part of it represents some kind of discomfort. Sometimes the job is dirty and distasteful, maybe it'll give you a backache, or maybe it entails sacrificing something else you'd rather do. The discomfort can be physical or emotional: perhaps it will be boring, or it entails a task that will be embarrassing, such as having to invent an apology for the excuse for the apology you know you should have made weeks ago.
Self-Doubt can mean two things. One is that we have no idea where to begin, like when we open the cupboard door, look at the clutter and hastily close it again before we can exhale. And if we have that much trouble getting started with one cupboard, how much more complicated it is to plan a career or solve a problem. We often get caught in the I can't do this until I've done that, but I can't start that until I've done this thinking. It becomes all too overwhelming.
The other aspect to self-doubt is that you aren't confident about the outcome. In essence it's the fear of not being good enough. So you delay, in the hope that some wise insight will descend on you by the grace of whoever's up there, watching you repeat the same idiotic pattern. I can clearly imagine my Guardian Angels looking down on me: Good grief, could she possibly make things harder for herself? Gimme another gin, for St Pete's sake. How are we going to get her out of this one?
Actually it's because I know all the traps of procrastination (intimately) that I have discovered a variety of solutions.
The trick is, we are not always aware of exactly why we are procrastinating. That's why it gets such a hold of us, and then it becomes a lifetime habit that spreads from one area of life onto everything else.
It may not be the whole task that represents the problem, but just one small part of it, like a single phone call. If you can identify which tiny part is sabotaging the whole project, you're well on your way to finding the right solution.
One key is to hear what you're telling yourself to avoid doing this thing.
I work best under pressure. Uhuh. It's true that pressure can be motivating and most of us do push ourselves to do what needs to be done when push literally comes to shove. Run most of your life like that though, and you're cooking up a big stress problem, guaranteed. A little self-discipline or perhaps better planning can create just as much pressure, while protecting the cushion of time that can be so valuable if something unexpected occurs. Positive stress is occasional pressure; negative stress that builds toxins in your body is continual stress from constant pressure. In the end you can never relax. Who wants to live like that?
It may be important but it isn't urgent. The greatest mistake you can make is to let your actions be determined solely by urgency rather than importance. It's the best way to get trapped in the 'management by crisis' cycle, constantly putting out one bushfire after another, even while you're creating yet another by letting things build up.
I've got to tidy up first. This may be valid, but it may also be a sure indicator you're in overwhelm and can't think straight. If 'clearing the decks' means shuffling papers one by one from one pile onto another, then it's a diversionary routine.
I need to sleep on it. Sure, some matters need to incubate for a while. But real problem solving is best done pen in hand so you can catch those ideas and develop them properly, over time, if you have any to spare. (Which you probably haven't, because you've been procrastinating for so long.)
Delaying one more day won't make much difference. This is perhaps the most common delay tactic of all. The trouble is, we forget how many 'tomorrows' have already slipped by and how close the deadline is creeping. What deadline? Perhaps you never identified the deadline in the first place—there might be the problem. Keep asking yourself two key questions: What are the consequences if I leave this? And: If not now, then when?
I'm not in the mood right now. Oh, aren't we a little Princess! Trust me, if this is something you're avoiding, you will never be in the mood. So stop waiting for that magic moment—or are you waiting for someone to get exasperated enough with you that they'll do it for you? Hmn?
And then there are the more obvious ones: It's too hard; it's going to hurt; it might not work… delaying is only prolonging the agony of waiting to find out. Get it over with so you can breathe again.
And the doozy of them all: It's too late now. Maybe it is. But how sad, if it means terrific opportunities have been missed, or even relationships wrecked.
Is it really worth the risk?
Many of us are painfully—excruciatingly—aware or our patterns and our typical excuses, but what to do with all this wonderful insight is the thing.
There are a variety of solutions to procrastination. Some might seem to contradict others totally. Sure they do. Why not? It depends on the task, the circumstances and on you. Try them all.
10 Tips to Beat Procrastination
- If your avoidance is due to Self-Doubt, identify an easy or enjoyable bit to get going. By the time you get to the heart of the problem, it doesn't seem nearly as bad because it's not carrying the weight of the whole project. Or even if it is still that bad, it'll be more manageable because it's the last hurdle.
- If your avoidance is due to Discomfort Dodging, the opposite will work better. Identify the hardest task to start with; the rest will be down hill. If possible, start each day with the most unpleasant task and watch yourself fly through the rest of the day.
- Commit yourself to five minutes only. Even set a timer, and when it rings, you stop. This works well with tidying up and filing. If you know you will limit yourself to just five minutes you're more likely to start. It's amazing how much can be accomplished in a short time.
- Subdivide large jobs into small tasks and set specific deadlines for each of them. Very often, we wait until we have the full length of time required for the job—say three hours. It's harder to find a block of three hours to complete the paper in one hit than it is to find 10 minutes to map out an outline, or gather some essential information, say.
- Pick a time when you are at your most energetic for high-concentration jobs. We often force ourselves to attend to difficult jobs when we are at our most tired, which takes us twice as long and is twice as unpleasant. If you concentrate better early in the day, schedule a time to write that paper in the morning rather than after hours. Leave idiot jobs such as filing for those times of the day when you hit a low. You'll be much more productive.
- Block out distractions—have those calls screened, or leave the office. When we don't want to do a task, we often subconsciously pick a time when we will be interrupted, because we can then have the perfect excuse. Hey, it wasn't my fault…there I was, ready to roll…
- Plan smaller, short tasks you can do in between longer ones to give yourself a break. So if you're writing that lengthy document, make a useful phone call when you need a rest. Either way, you'll be nudging a project forward in a more constructive fashion, rather than forcing it.
- Make a commitment to someone else. Whether it's to your client, your child, or your life partner, instead of promising to do something or be somewhere 'as soon as possible', commit to getting done by a specific time. That will make it harder to put off. Of course, this only works if you have a conscience about breaking promises!
- Find a way to make the job more enjoyable. Such as drafting the brief onto a tape while you're on the treadmill, or watching TV while you're sorting out some mess or doing the ironing.
- This one of the most powerful techniques: instead of visualising how awful this task will be, put your energy into visualising how great you'll feel when it's done.
Recognise that you have a choice: you can make it harder for yourself in the long run, or easier. You can let this whole year go by with the focus being only on one aspect of your life, or you can start now to introduce small action steps to develop those aspects you've neglected, such as relationships; time for YOU; fun. (Fun? What's that?)
When I need a strategically-placed kick, I remind myself:
DOING IT GETS IT DONE!
and
IF NOT NOW, THEN WHEN?
Wise Words
Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realise they were the big things.
Robert Brault