How do you get past procrastination?
I’ve been meaning to write this blog for ages. The problem is that procrastination gets in the way which means that all my good ideas stay just that; ideas.
Procrastination comes from a number of sources and the one thing that it’s often attributed to is rarely the cause. The one thing that procrastination often isn’t is laziness.
Root causes of procrastination can be from:
- Fear of failure – a very common cause. The best way to avoid failure is to not do something in the first place; how can you fail at something you aren’t doing?
- Responsibility – when you delegate responsibility such as referring your query or question to someone or somewhere else, it allows you to procrastinate for longer.
- Living in your comfort zone – if doing something means change which takes you away from your comfort zone, why would you take action on making that change?
- Doing for others rather than yourself – it’s harder to do something when you’re not emotionally invested in it so working to someone else’s timescale becomes easier to put off. To prove the point, how many people do you hear of who are rushing through their tax return at the end of January?
- Perfectionism – if you constantly worry that something isn’t good enough, it’s much easier to simply not do it. It’s strongly connected to fear of failure in that you can’t fail at something you aren’t doing!
- Focusing on your flaws – do you focus on what’s not right with you or your ability to do something rather than what is right? It’s well observed that as human beings, we find it easier to focus on the negatives about ourselves than the positives. Women in particular are less likely to apply for a job where they don’t hold all the key attributes than men.
- High expectations – self-imposed high expectations are more likely to stop you before you start. It doesn’t mean that you need to lower your standards, it just means that if it’s stopping you from getting off the starting blocks, break the task down so that your expectations can be more realistic to accomplish.
These are just a few and there will be many more that are personal to you. Procrastination isn’t permanent and when you find your own way of dealing with it in a positive and productive way, you can push past it and achieve whatever you want to.
Here are my 5 ways to beat procrastination
- Done is better than perfect. This is a well-used saying but is true. If the reason you’re putting something off is because you can’t get it exactly perfect, ask yourself if it needs to be? Just because it’s not perfect to you, it doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with it or that others will even see the imperfections. You’ll feel so much better for getting it done and probably surprise yourself in the process.
- Set a time limit. Parkinson’s Law dictates that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. So if you have a job to do and a whole day to do it, you’ll drag it out whereas if you set a time limit of 30 minutes, you’ll do it in the time available. A really useful way of doing this is to set a timer. I love the Forest app. You set the timer for your job and when you’ve finished, it plants a tree for you. There is something very encouraging about seeing all the trees you’ve planted in a day!
- Take action. Sometimes it is as simple as ‘putting your big-girl pants on and getting on with it’. It’s easy to look for excuses and reasons but sometimes you really need to just take action and make a start.
- Make SMART goals. SMART goals stand for Specific, Meaningful, Adaptive, Realistic and Time-limited. When you bring meaning to your goals, when you can see how they relate to the task and when you break everything down into bite-sized manageable chunks then the task will become easier and more doable.
- Create new habits. When you create new habits, the task in hand becomes less effort because it feels like the right thing to do. The easiest way to create a new habit is to bolt it on to an existing one. If you get up in the morning and think you ‘really should’ do some exercise, the chances of you making an effort during the day to get it done can feel more of a challenge and easy to park for another time. When you make it a habit that connects to something else then it will feel more natural much quicker. If you want to add in more exercise to your day, try putting your kit out the night before so that when you get up, it’s there ready to trigger the thoughts of exercise. If you want to change how you feel about something, create 4-5 self-statements or affirmations such as ‘I can make my own decisions’ or whatever connects to how you’re feeling and whenever you brush your teeth, recite the affirmations to yourself. Habits are easier to create when they connect to existing habits.
Think of ways that you’ve overcome procrastination in the past and make a start. Putting it off will not get you to where you want to be.
If you’d like to find out more about how I can help with any of the points I’ve talked about here, please just get in touch at catherine@berkshiretherapist.co.uk and arrange a chat.