The Cure for Procrastination
If, like me, when something is a little stressful, you’d rather wait until you feel better about it to actually do about something about it, then you might be a procrastinator. If, like Tim Urban, you can only work when you panic, you might be a procrastinator — and if you look up that name and don’t come back, you’re definitely a procrastinator.
If you’re like me, you have lots of things you want to accomplish but you’re still looking for a way to start or stick to them.
Focus isn’t the fix for procrastination, because I can be super focused on things that don’t matter. Willpower isn’t the fix for procrastination, because I can sit in front of a blank page for hours. Motivation isn’t the fix for procrastination, because I can be motivated to start a lot of things I won’t finish.
Not even breaking things down into easy pieces is enough sometimes.
But there is a path that can help.
1. Remove Obstacles
If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.
- Jesus, Matthew 5:30
Jesus was a guy who knew what was up. If you want to accomplish something, if you really, really want to get something done, you have to cut off and throw away the things that stop you from getting it done. You don’t always have to be this drastic, but if you cut off your left hand you’ll be all right.
I’m just kidding, you’ll still have about a foot left.
Let us also lay aside every weight.
- Some guy, Hebrews 12:1
Some guy was also a guy who knew what was up. If you had to climb a mountain, you wouldn’t carry a single extra pound you knew you wouldn’t need. If you have to write an essay, you probably shouldn’t keep Wikipedia open the entire time.
To do your best at something, it’s important to remove things that prevent you from doing it and things that make it harder to do.
Impulse control is dependent on the state of your brain — it’s not only a learned skill. This is why even children who are ‘trained’ with how to be safe around a gun still can’t help themselves but play with it, just like how you might know that you shouldn’t fall into a Wikipedia hole. But, it doesn’t take much to start at ZETA and end up at abracadabra. (Four clicks.) If you’re used to procrastinating it’s going to take more than willpower to stop.
Remove the metaphorical guns from your environment so that you don’t kill your productivity before it even begins.
2. Prepare Physically
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
- Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter
It’s hard to do your laundry if you don’t have a washing machine. Not impossible, just a lot harder — you could still do it by hand, or bring your clothes to a laundromat — but if you’re already prone to procrastination, chances are good that washing your clothes in that situation will get pushed back as far as possible.
If you have to assemble your tools every time you want to work, in the best case it will take you longer to start working, and in the worst case it will take you longer to try working. It’s easier to work if you separate the stress of preparing from the stress of doing the work.
Make your workspace ready in advance so that you can start at any time.
It’s also hard to do your laundry if your children are nagging you to pay attention to them. You could still do it while yelling at each other from different rooms, but being prone to procrastination goes hand in hand with being prone to abandoning something in the middle of doing it. It would be much easier to do your laundry if you knew your children didn’t seriously need anything at that moment and you could tell them to wait.
As much as possible, get bothersome tasks out of the way that would prevent you from being wholehearted about what you want to do instead. For me, that often means checking on my to-do list at the start of the day and planning out when things have to happen so I can forget about them until then. For children, it might mean tying them up so they can’t get into trouble.
Whatever you need to do, lower the barrier to getting started.
3. Prepare Mentally
Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.
Whenever I try to draw a straight line, I forget to look at the most important thing: what I’m aiming at. I consistently draw crooked lines over distances as short as one centimeter because I get distracted or think that I can get away with looking at something else while I draw the line. It never works and my X’s are ashamed to be seen with me.
A good artist will pay attention to what they’re doing while they do it. One of the many differences between me and an experienced artist is that they settle in to drawing and I treat it like something to get over with as fast as possible. Because they’re paying attention to the line they’re making, it goes where they want it to.
The solution is to take an extra second or few and settle in. If you’ve decided to do something, it must be worth doing. Acknowledge that and tell other things and thoughts to wait for just a little while.
There are two skills here: effective self-talk, and enough awareness to take the extra time. Meditation is often praised as a magic bullet for these two skills, but you can practice them on their own. Let’s break it down.
Effective self-talk is the skill of convincing yourself of something. It’s the story you tell about yourself to yourself. Your brain will constantly bring you thoughts, and it’s your job to choose which ones you pay attention to and which ones you put aside for later. When you choose to do something, effective self-talk means accepting the thoughts that relate to your immediate goal and putting aside other thoughts, even if those thoughts might be interesting at another time.
Awareness is the skill of knowing when you should do something. It’s right judgement about what to pay attention to. It’s not awareness to know that you have to use the bathroom — that’s just sensation — it’s awareness to get there with clean underpants. When you choose to do something, awareness means recognizing that you’ve made that choice and taking full advantage of it.
Put awareness and effective self-talk together just as you start a task and you’ll be focused and in the right mindset to succeed at what you’re doing.
4. Dive In
“I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.”
- Gandalf
You’ve made yourself as free as you can be, your space is ready, your tools are handy, and you’ve gently convinced yourself that this is what you should be doing right now.
So what are you waiting for? Go! Now!
You’re still here?
You’re probably facing Stress. You know that tight feeling in your chest when you look at something you don’t want to deal with right now? That’s the one.
Brains take a lot of convincing to change. They’re stubborn. They like fast rewards, like potato chips and Instagram, and if we let them do whatever they liked we’d all be a thousand pounds and need someone else to entertain us all the time.
But you know what? Now you know who your enemy is: Your brain. The habits it’s learned about how to feel better, that you’ve formed over your entire life, from birth to now, are what’s telling you to go do something else than the stressful thing you want to do right now. You don’t have to listen to it.
Procrastination is a habit. If you follow the steps above, you will be well equipped to fight it, but you do have to fight it. No one else can fight it for you, but you can make the fight easier through a lot of different tactics.
Eventually you’ll win. The only thing you need to do is keep showing up. And the things you find stressful now, you might even find fun.
Brain Tricks
Sneaky little Hobbitses.
Turn your task into a game to give your brain the dopamine it’s looking for. Small, regular rewards are how you train animals, and brains aren’t much different. You can make almost anything fun with the right kind of self-talk; kids do it all the time: Tell yourself a story about why what you’re doing is important. It’s especially easy about things that are “finished,” like putting a period at the end of a sentence. Anything can make you feel good about yourself if you let it.
Use single-purpose tools. One of the best ways to be distracted is to have the Internet at your fingertips while you’re trying to do something as simple as write, or do homework. If it takes less than a second to stop what you’re doing and browse Facebook, you’re making it too easy to fall into an old habit. Try limiting your environment to the bare necessities that can get your task done. Make it difficult to get distracted.
Don’t do it alone. Even if your partner is a checklist on a wall, having something or someone helping you along can be invaluable. Sometimes, the right person is a coach or trainer who can check up on your progress regularly. If you need more than occasional check-ins, find someone to work right next to you. Have something to keep you accountable.
Take breaks when you need them. Especially when you’re starting to do something new, like focusing on writing for a long time, you’ll get tired and become less productive over time. Monitor the length of the break so that you don’t abandon what you were doing, and try to set a minimum length of time to work on something before you take a break. The pomodoro technique is a great way to do this. Keep a balance between work and relaxation that works for you.
TL;DR
Remove obstacles that take up your time or distract you from doing what you want. Prepare your tools, and your working environment, so you can start your work. Convince yourself that what you’re doing is worth it right now, in the current moment, and encourage yourself to be present and focused.
Keep trying to do something, showing up well prepared to fight your own internal resistance, and eventually you’ll erode that resistance you feel to doing what you want to do.
