Carpets & Flooring
CRI Articles
IEHA Articles
IICRC Articles
Features
Putting tasks off to the last possible minute can be a major problem in both your career and your personal life. Missed opportunities, stress, resentment and guilt are just some of the symptoms. This article will give you practical tools to overcome it.
When you tell yourself that you have to do something, you'll automatically feel a sense of resentment and rebellion. Procrastination kicks in as a defense mechanism.
Realize and accept that you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Even though there may be serious consequences, you are always free to choose. All the decisions you've made along the way have brought you to where you are today. If you don't like where you've ended up, you're free to start making different decisions, and new results will follow. Procrastination becomes less likely on tasks that you openly and freely choose to undertake.
Replace "finish it" with "begin it."
When you focus on finishing a task where you can't clearly envision all the steps to completion, you create a feeling of overwhelm. Replace, "How am I going to finish this?" with "What small step can I start on right now?" If you simply start a task enough times, you will eventually finish it.
If one of the projects you want to complete is to clean out your garage, ask yourself how you can get started on just one small part of the project. For example, go to your garage with a notepad, and simply write down a few ideas for 10-minute tasks to make a dent in the piles of junk. Maybe move one or two obvious pieces to the trash can while you're there. Don't worry about finishing anything significant. Just focus on what you can do right now. If you do this enough times, you'll eventually be starting on the final piece of the task, and that will lead to finishing.
Replace perfectionism with permission to be human.
Believing that you must do something perfectly is a recipe for stress. You'll associate that stress with the task and condition yourself to avoid it. You end up putting the task off to the last possible minute, so that you finally have a way out of this trap: now there isn't enough time to do the job perfectly. You can tell yourself you could have been perfect if you only had more time. But if you have no specific deadline for a task, perfectionism can cause you to delay indefinitely. If you've never started that project you always wanted to do really well, could perfectionism be holding you back?
Give yourself permission to be human. Have you ever used a piece of software that you consider to be perfect in every way? I doubt it. Realize that an imperfect job completed today is always superior to the perfect job delayed indefinitely.
Replace deprivation with guaranteed fun.
Do you tell yourself that you will have to go into seclusion, work long hours, never see your family and have no time for fun? That's not likely to be very motivating, yet this is what many people do when trying to push themselves into action.
Guarantee the fun parts of your life first, then schedule your work around them. This may sound counterproductive, but this reverse psychology works extremely well. Decide in advance what times you will allocate each week to family time, entertainment, exercise, social activities and personal hobbies. Guarantee an abundance of all your favorite leisure activities. Then limit the amount of working hours each week to whatever is left. By treating your working time as a scarce resource rather than an uncontrollable monster that can gobble up every other area of your life, you'll begin to feel much more balanced. You'll be far more focused and effective in using your working time.
I also strongly recommend that you take at least one full day off each week with no work whatsoever. If you know that the next day is your day off, you'll be less likely to put off tasks. When you think that every day is a work day, however, work seems never-ending, and you always tell yourself, "I should be working." Your brain will use procrastination as a way to guarantee that you get some form of pleasure in your life.
Use time-boxing.
For tasks you've been putting off for a while, I recommend using the time-boxing method to get started. Here's how it works: First, select a small piece of the task you can work on for just 30 minutes. Then choose a reward you will give yourself immediately afterwards. Examples include watching your favorite TV show, seeing a movie, enjoying a meal or snack, going out with friends, going for a walk, or doing anything you find pleasurable. Because the amount of time you'll be working on the task is so short, your focus will shift to the impending pleasure of the reward instead of the difficulty of the task. No matter how unpleasant the task, there's virtually nothing you can't endure for just 30 minutes if you have a big enough reward waiting for you.
When you time-box your tasks, you may discover that something very interesting happens. You will probably find that you continue working much longer than 30 minutes. You will often get so involved in a task, even a difficult one, that you actually want to keep working on it. Before you know it, you've put in an hour or even several hours. The certainty of your reward is still there, so you know you can enjoy it whenever you're ready to stop.
When you do decide to stop working, claim your reward and enjoy it. Then schedule another 30-minute period to work on the task with another reward. This will help you associate more and more pleasure to the task, knowing that you will always be immediately rewarded for your efforts. You'll be eager to return to work on your task again and again, and you'll ultimately finish it.
Realize that procrastination is caused by associating some form of pain or unpleasantness to the task you are contemplating. The way to overcome procrastination is simply to reduce the pain and increase the pleasure you associate with beginning a task, allowing you to overcome inertia and build positive forward momentum.
Overcoming Procrastination: Created on March 3rd, 2005. Last Modified on January 21st, 2014
