3 SIMPLE STEPS TO CONQUERING PROCRASTINATION

I have a confession to make. I am a recovering procrastinator.

I’m not sure when it started. If I think back to my school days, I remember always avoiding doing my homework until the very last minute and then bribing someone who was much more intelligent and disciplined than me to let me copy the work that they had done. I was never very academic but I was quite creative in finding ways to get things done with minimum effort.

That worked well for getting through school but as I progresses into the real world, I found that you can’t rely on others to do your work for you and minimum effort equals minimum return.

I found myself caught in a struggle between having high ambitions and aspirations but lacking the willpower to do the work.

I needed to solve the procrastination puzzle for myself if I was to ever become a higher achiever than Mr. Bare Minimum. Here’s what I learnt.

Why we procrastinate

It turns out I’m not the only one. In fact, humans are built to value immediate gratification more than future gratification. We know we need to get our tax return done before the end of the month and we know we will feel good once its off the To Do list, but its not much fun doing tax returns so instead we go on Facebook and watch videos of cats doing cool tricks, because that’s a lot more fun and that’s instant gratification.

The problem is that the more we succumb to frittering our time away on the things that don’t benefit us in the long term, the more it becomes a habit and we get stuck in the grips of mediocrity, aversion and unfulfilled potential.

And the time you lose to procrastination will never, ever be recouped. Once its gone, its gone.

So what can we do about it?

Step 1 – Turn up the volume on the internal narrative

The reason we don’t take action on the things we know we should be doing is because the instant gratification part of our brain is winning the battle in our heads, outside of our conscious awareness. So we need to raise our awareness of what it is that’s driving our ‘avoidance’ behaviour. We do this by doing the following:

1. Write a list of all the things you have been avoiding. Every task, both personally and professionally that will improve your life in the long run.
2. Now imagine yourself approaching each of these tasks and notice any negative emotions you feel in the body and any thoughts that you have as to why you don’t want to do the task. Write down all the things that come to mind next to each of the tasks on the list.
3. Now imagine that you never procrastinate. That you just get things done easily and effortlessly. Picture yourself doing each of these tasks and notice what emotions you feel when you are doing them and once they are completed. Write all these down. We’ll come back to this list later in the blog.

Step 2 – Remove ambiguity

Aside from the instant gratification monkey, another dominant reason for procrastinating is that people lack clarity around where to begin, which makes it easier to avoid it rather than doing it.

What we want to do is flip that on its head and make it as easy as possible to get started. So for each task you want to do, break it down to the most simple action orientated steps. For example, when I wanted to write this blog post. The overall task was to write the blog post, but the first steps were to get out a notepad and pen, then write bullet points of the main areas I wanted to cover in order to have a framework to build on.

Step 3 – Become intentional

Now that you’ve laid the groundwork by getting clear on what’s happening in your head and what behaviours need to take place in order to move forward. Its time to take action.

1. Before you do anything else. Sit down and spend at least a minute taking a few deep breaths. Breath in for the count of 5 and out for the count of 5. This helps to disengage you from any habitual patterns of negative behaviour.
2. Now it time to use the WOOP Method (this was developed Gabriele Oettingen and stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan). First, get your list that you did previously and choose one task that you want to get done.
3. Then remind yourself of your desired emotional state (Your Wish) and what you need to do to get the task done (Your Outcome).
4. Next, look at the emotions you noted that come up and lead you to procrastinate (Your Obstacles).
5. Finally, confirm to yourself what you will do (Your Plan) to overcome these obstacles by referring to the clear and concise action steps you listed and the number one action you need to take to get started.
6. Take that first step. Take action.

What you will find is by taking action, you will build confidence. Behaviour comes first, feeling comes after. And secondly the more aware you become of the negative emotions and thoughts that arise, the more they will become the signal to take action. Rather than hampering you the very thing that previously held you back will become the fuel for moving forward, for raising your standards, for training your self-discipline muscle, for becoming a doer!