Procrastination is the silent killer of dreams. Distracting our minds, tricking us into thinking nothing’s wrong, it insidiously eats away at our progress and affects our lives in ways we don’t even realize. We’ve all been there before, we all know what it’s like. You know what you’re supposed to be doing, your just NOT DOING IT! There was something on TV that you had to watch, someone you had to speak to on the phone, you had to take the trash out! Then by the time you finished doing that it was time to eat. You ate then realized you should probably take a shower and so it goes, on an on, until days have passed and you still haven’t done what it is you originally set out to do!
In order to learn the art of overcoming procrastination we must first learn the answer to the question "why do we procrastinate?" Why do we put things off? Let’s explore this further in order that we might be able to disable the power that procrastination has to affect our lives. I believe there are a few reasons procrastination occurs:
1. We’re fearful of doing the activity: We have associated a certain level of pain to doing the activity that we are putting off. I know sometimes when I have to make a phone call that I don’t particularly want to make I’ll put it off as long as I possibly can. The reason is on some level that I’m scared. It’s going to be a difficult call where for example I might have to undertake a challenging negotiation and subconsciously I want to avoid the pain I think I’ll get so I put it off. I keep running away from it by filling in the time that was supposed to be used for the activity, usually with far less meaningful and important activities.
2. We aren’t focused: Sometimes we aren’t even scared of the activity, we just aren’t focused. Every day our five senses are bombarded with hundreds of thousands of pieces of stimuli from our environment all competing for our attention. Our brain has the arduous task of deciding which of those stimuli are worthy of our focus and which are to be discarded and ignored. This is no fault of our own either, it is simply a by product of the fast paced world we live in. This makes focus hard and consequently sometimes despite our desire to want to concentrate solely on a particular task or moment, just one of the many thousands of passing stimuli grabs our attention and we are distracted.
3. We don’t feel that the activity in question has a significant purpose that aligns with our long term or overall purpose. In other words we don’t know well enough why we are doing the activity in question. It doesn’t seem to be for a very good reason, or perhaps no reason at all. It seems irrelevant, we haven’t defined its importance. We don’t know or are distracted from what we might gain by doing the activity.
While there is no doubt these aren’t the only reasons, I think it is almost always some combination of these three that results in the tendency to put things off and not take action when we know we should.
Overcoming Procrastination
Ok so we understand this thing enough now, how do we beat it? What is the secret to overcoming procrastination? Here are some things that will help as well as explanations of which reasons for procrastination they will overcome:
1. Set Goals: Blatantly obvious right? This helps us to overcome reason three above because each action we take starts to have a purpose. Each action fits in with something that we have defined as wanting to achieve. No action is pointless. You will immediately find there are less times where you feel like putting things off when you know that the action in question is leading you to a worthwhile outcome. There is a famous quote by Anthony Robbins who said how people often ask him “How have you achieved so much? It’s ok for you because you’re so motivated… I’m just lazy!”. To which he replies “There are no lazy people. You aren’t lazy, you just have impotent goals that don’t inspire you!”. You can learn more about goal setting by reading some of my goal setting articles)
2. Know WHY you’re doing what you’re doing: This also works to overcome procrastination cause number 3. Not only do you need goals but you need to know WHY you want that goal. You need to have REASONS for wanting those goals; reasons that are infused with emotion and feeling. Emotion is the cause of all action; Emotion is the driving force behind achievement of any kind. When you know exactly why you are doing what you’re doing each day, even the smallest actions become meaningful. Not only will you not put things off, you will WANT to do them so badly that procrastination won’t even be an option.
Furthermore an addition to this principle is a little trick that helps overcome reason 1 for procrastination: fear. Fear is almost always the result of misrepresenting something that we are about to do in our minds. Fear is a mental construct, not a physical reality. When I’m feeling a level of fear or discomfort related to performing an activity I grab a pad and pen and remind myself of WHY I’m doing it. I’ll write down everything I stand to gain by performing the action NOW and everything I’ll lose by putting it off. It’s important to connect with emotions here too. I’ll write down all the great things I’ll FEEL after I have done it and highlight all the pain I’ll get if I put if off another second. Begin each sentence with I’ll feel… I’ll feel… I’ll feel…
3. Get into the HABIT: This helps you overcome procrastination cause number 2. Habits are one of the most powerful phenomenon of human behavior. Habits give us the power to act AUTOMATICALLY; To do things without thinking. This is powerful because it helps us to develop patterns of behaviour that help our brains to know immediately which stimuli to respond to and which to discard because the combinations are the same every day. Our actions are habitual so we focus on the same stimuli and ignore the same stimuli.
In other words, overcoming procrastination requires we get into the habit of taking action. Start out small: Every time you catch yourself putting something off, jump up in the air, scream loudly and say “GET BACK TO WORK!” or something like that, and immediately return to your task. If you have procrastination fixes one and two down you will have enough motivation that you won’t be putting something off because you don’t want to do it, it will only be because of a mental slip. All you need to do then is jolt your brain and snap out of it.
4. Set a Schedule: It’s so much harder to procrastinate when you have a set time that you’re supposed to be doing everything. At any time of the day you know exactly what activity should be occupying your time. Not only that but you don’t have time to procrastinate because you have to the things you set yourself to do. I’ll write a task list at the start of every day then go about ploughing through it. I’ll set as many tasks as will make the day challenging time wise so that there is literally no time to stop. I don’t really set a time frame for each activity because I find that too restrictive but I always have my eye on the clock to see if I’ll be able to get it all done in time. Procrastination, BYE BYE!
Ultimately it’s about looking inside yourself and discovering why it is that you personally procrastinate in the first place. After you know your own reasons you can look to this list and use some combination of these procrastination fixes that sit best with you to have the problem solved as quickly as possible.
Like I said, pretty soon you will just be in the habit of NOT putting things off. With a little focus and consistent effort you will realize the power procrastination has to effect your life and you will continually pull that weed out before it has a chance to do any damage.
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