Starting things is hard

This first sentence has taken me days to write. At least, that’s one way to look at it. Whenever I have an open-ended project in front of me, whether it’s setting my OKRs for the quarter, preparing slides for a presentation, or writing a blog post, starting is always the hardest part for me. As soon as I ask myself, “What should I write this blog post about?”, my brain goes in a million directions and I can’t focus on picking just one. The end result is that I tend to procrastinate a lot. It’s as if by waiting and putting off these tasks, the answers will magically come to me. That almost never happens.

I’ve been a procrastinator for as long as I can remember. Even as early as middle school, I would pull all-nighters to finish in one night what was supposed to be a month-long project. In some ways the time pressure of getting something done really helps me focus. When it’s 3am and my deadline is 9am, I can finally tell myself “Done is better than perfect”, and push forward. But it’s a really bad habit. The next day I’m a complete zombie because I haven’t slept and I can’t think through problems clearly. Even worse, my interpersonal skills go downhill when I’m tired. And that gets in the way of being my most effective as a manager.

So what can I do the next time I’m staring at a blank document? One thing that’s been really effective for me is to set up time with my colleagues to review what I have so far and get their feedback. For example, the last time I had to present at a conference, I set up a practice run with my teammates a few days beforehand. This held me accountable for at least having the bulk of the presentation done ahead of time. In the final 24 hours, I was making minor tweaks instead of starting from scratch.

I still struggle from time to time, so if anyone else has found a way to stop procrastinating, I’d love to hear about it!