If staring at your goals for long enough could motivate you to start working towards them, it would have been perfect.
Unfortunately, it is not so. The reality is vastly different.
You sit on your laptop for hours, doing things, but at the end of the day you find you have not ticked off majority of items on your to-do list.
On a weekend you sit down with your partner with a drink in hand and in a mood to discuss your future but you realize you are still as far away from your dreams as you were five years ago.
You know that the time has come to take drastic measures but you have no clue about how or what.
Well, I believe in going to the root of the problems and starting from first principles. And that is how I am going to tackle this specific problem of yours in this post.
If you are an enlightened soul and know that it is because you are procrastinating, jump straight to the section on step-by-step process to avoid procrastination.
However, if you want to be sure that you have not been able to achieve your goals because you are procrastinating on them, continue reading.
What is procrastination?
When you do not do something that you should be doing at any given point of time, that is procrastination.
Plain and simple as that.
If you want to be tougher on yourself, you can say that when you are being lazy and not doing what you are expected to do, that is procrastination. The expectation may have been set by you yourself or someone else. Hardly matters.
If you are procrastinating, you are in good company.
Research has found that 25% percent of people procrastinate. In the 1970s, this figure was just 5%.
But this is not a company you should be proud of. Because it is taking you away from the life and lifestyle you want.
Imagine being able to take your dream vacation in the Caribbean (never Alps, because cold weather is not good for the bones!) without bothering about anything else, including work commitments and bills.
If you are like most people, you imagine and crave for your ideal life but find it difficult to start working towards them today.
But why is that?
Why do we procrastinate?
Before we get onto how you can avoid procrastination you need to understand the root of the problem, that is, why do people procrastinate.
There is just one reason why people procrastinate — fear.
Yes, fear.
Fear of
- Being judged
- Failure
And why do you fear failing or being judged or both?
Because you do not have your “why“ for doing something sorted.
Maybe you don’t even know why you are doing something.
The real reason behind it.
For instance, if a grade 10 student is slogging out for their board examinations today, it is not just because they want top marks.
It is so that they can get subjects of their choice in the next class.
So that they can study the subjects they want and choose a career of their liking.
So that 5–7 years down the line they can have a life they love.
Having a personal and professional life that helps them be successful and happy (both simultaneously!! that’s a separate post for some other day 🤪) is their why for studying.
Coming back to you,
If you have joined the downtown gym just so you can “tell“ everyone about it, you will not be able to continue it for long.
You will soon find excuses for not going.
But if you have joined the gym because you want to be fit and healthy, you will never lack motivation to go to the gym.
If you have joined the golf club just because all the people in your network are members of the elite club, you will never really learn the game.
Because you will never have the time to do so.
But if you have joined the golf club because you seriously want to pursue it as a hobby, you will find time to visit the golf course every weekend and improve your game day by day.
So what is your “why” for doing something?
Is it just so you look good in front of others or because it helps you fulfill some larger personal, professional, financial, physical or mental health goals?
Once you have that sorted out, you will always be motivated enough to complete a task rather than procrastinate on it.
So, before you start working again, think through the real reason behind why you want to tick the task off your list.
Signs that you are procrastinating
Sometimes you do not know that you are procrastinating. But still you are unable to complete your tasks, whatever you take up.
And surely this is a situation you don’t like being in.
Just to help you out here are a few signs to look for if you feel you might be procrastinating:
- You feel overwhelmed by the size of the task and promptly delegate it to the backburner till it becomes very very urgent. Know that bigger the task, bigger the fear of failure and being judged. You tend to leave it till so late before the deadline that finishing it is itself an achievement and you don’t bother about its quality or what others say about it.
- You cannot decide which task on your to-do list is important and hence you move off to something more interesting and mindless like checking your social media or going for a cup of coffee with colleagues. Since you do not know why you are doing those tasks that ended up on your to-do list, you do something that does not take any mind space. Or whose why you are clear about — have some immediate fun.
- You want to give your work one last tweak before passing it on to your boss or client. After all, you want your work to be perfect. Let me assure you, a perfectionist is the biggest procrastinator. They are just hiding behind the garb of perfectionism. Is that you?
Step by step process to avoid procrastination
You know that procrastination is not good for you — in the long term or in the short. So let’s get onto how to deal with it.
Procrastination is more a mindset issue and mindsets are not changed in a day.
But while you are working on your mindset there are a couple of things you can start working on a framework that helps you avoid procrastination.
Step 1: Have at least a week’s schedule ready in your calendar
When you do not have something concrete to go on, you tend to procrastinate.
Doing tasks that are trivial or important for you.
When you know the next three things you are supposed to be doing, it will be that much more difficult to waste time doing nothing.
You do not need to sit down and create the schedule for the next seven days in one dedicated session.
Schedule tasks in your calendar as they come up. And very soon you will have a full calendar. Maybe more than you can manage. And when you have a full calendar it is really difficult to waste time doing nothing.
How to create a calendar schedule
If you want to go deep on how to create schedules, read here, but here is a quick process you can adopt to fill up your calendar:
- Prioritize your tasks as they come up. If they are time bound, put them in your calendar accordingly. If they are not time bound, schedule them in the calendar within the next three days if they are very important, else put them for later.
- If the task is too big to be completed in one sitting, break them down into smaller tasks that can fit into your calendar. So if a task is going to take you, say, five hours, break it into chunks of two and three hours or two, two and one hours.
- If you open the calendar for the day and find that it is empty or has hardly any tasks, move some of the tasks up and do them today
Putting tasks in a calendar has another advantage.
The moment you put a task in the calendar, you don’t need to remember them and hence clear your mind space to focus on the task at hand.
If you cannot decide the priority of the task or find time slots immediately, put them in your Superlist.
In case you do not know, a Superlist is a combined list of all the personal and professional tasks you need to finish.
I believe in giving equal importance to personal and professional tasks, Otherwise you will be torn between the two and not have the much coveted work-life balance.
Step 2: Get an accountability buddy
I am sure you are telling yourself that it “looks” great to get the calendar set up and filled but how to ensure that you actually do that task scheduled there?
Fair point.
Solution: Get an accountability buddy.
Someone who will hold you accountable for finishing the tasks you are supposed to do, according to your own calendar.
This accountability buddy can be you yourself or someone else.
Write down the task for the day on a sticky note and put it up on your workstation. At the end as you complete the task, strike them off the list and lo, you have acted as your own accountability buddy.
And if you haven’t tried this before, let me assure you it is an immense pleasure scratching out a task from your list.
If this doesn’t work for you, you can make someone else your accountability buddy.
It can be your colleague, boss, family member or a social media friend. Someone you look up to and whose words mean a lot to you.
Fix up a time — daily, weekly or biweekly — with your buddy to give them an honest account of how much you were expected to finish and how much you actually did.
Initially, just having an accountability buddy will not help you do the task. But as time progresses you will be motivated to finish the task just because you can tell your buddy that you have finished them.
In return, you can be their accountability buddy as well.
If it’s difficult for you to find an accountability buddy within your family or friends, look for them on Facebook or LinkedIn. These sites are teeming with groups of like-minded people who are looking for an accountability buddy so they can get more done.
Step 3: Minimize distractions while you’re working
Distraction is a major factor for procrastination.
Take whatever drastic step you need to, for minimizing distractions while you are working. Distractions that prevent you from focusing on the task at hand.
Some suggestions for minimizing distractions:
- If you can close the door to your office or workspace, perfect. Add a do not disturb sign for good measure because some people do not get it when they see the door closed.
- If you cannot do this, put the do not disturb sign prominently so that anyone walking towards you knows you are not to be disturbed.
- If you have a child, client or boss who tends to disturb you again and again, talk to them and tell them you are not to be disturbed while working. Working at the same time every day will help them understand your sacred working hours. And slowly they will get into the habit of not disturbing you during those hours.
Step 4: Reward yourself when a task is accomplished
Do not wait for the big goal to be completed before you reward yourself. Organizations have known the effect of reward system on employee motivation for long.
Celebrate the small wins — completion of smallest steps towards that big goal.
When you celebrate these small wins, it releases the happiness hormone — dopamine — and your mind starts getting used to it, propelling you towards completing tasks that bring it so much happiness.
Basically you are tricking your brain into letting you focus and finish a task so that they can get a shot of dopamine when you finish.
Sounds more like an addiction!! But then you do want to get addicted to finishing tasks on your calendar 😃.
Step 5: Spend time with yourself
Remember we said that procrastination is a mindset issue and you must work towards changing that?
The first step towards this is spending time with yourself.
Talk to yourself, analyze your own actions and behavior to understand why you procrastinate.
Do you procrastinate on all tasks across the board?
Or are there some specific types of tasks you tend to procrastinate on? Why?
Are there specific times during the day when you feel too lazy to work? How can that be rectified?
Holding these dialogues will slowly take you towards removing these obstacles.
Where do you go from here?
We can explore all we want about what procrastination is, why you procrastinate and how you can overcome procrastination. But you need to start developing your own framework to avoid procrastination. According to the steps I have outlined above to actually start working towards them.
As you finish reading this post, I want to take you to take your first step towards beating procrastination.
Pick up a task (from your SuperList or to-do list) that needs to get done and schedule it in your calendar for today.
After completing, strike it off your list and reward yourself for completing the task.
You have taken the first baby step towards overcoming procrastination and now it’s time for the next one.
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