Top 17 Tips to Stop Procrastinating
Procrastination need not be a lifestyle or permament condition. Simple exercises can reduce your procrastinating tendencies and improve both your productivity and outlook. Here are my top 17 tips for procrastinators:
1. Make progress every day. This Verizon tagline is much more useful than Nike's "Just Do It." If you could follow Nike's advice, you wouldn't be a procrastinator. Procrastination is a spiral, similar to depression. The longer you wait to start, the harder it gets, and the deeper the hole you've dug. So resolve to accomplish something every day without trying to accomplish everything. If you write one page a day, you can write a book in a year. It isn't the days where you get only a little work accomplished that kill you; it is the days where you get literally nothing done.
Think that day lost whose low descending sun
Views from thy hand no worthy action done.
--Jacob Bobart (1690)
2. "Wisdom consists of knowing when to avoid perfection." My ancient WordStar program attributed this quote to Confucius. Many procrastinators are, in fact, perfectionists. If you don't start a task because it will take too long to do it perfectly, resolve to start it, even if you don't think you can do a perfect job. Don't fear starting. Accept less than perfection. You can always polish it later. In "What's Wrong with the World" (1910) Chesterton wrote, "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." He didn't mean you should strive to do a bad job. He meant that doing something for the love of it, even if you aren't good at it, is still worthwhile. Allow yourself to be mediocre at something new, like playing the piano or building a birdhouse.
3. Avoid things that aren't worth doing. The quote "If a thing is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well." has been attributed to Jerry Pournelle, John Maynard Keynes, and probably others. Procrastinators often find a million other things to do as an excuse for avoiding their real work or meaningful goals. It isn't worth organizing every file on your hard drive. Just use a search program to find what you want. When the drive gets full, buy a new drive (or it is probably time to upgrade computers) instead of trying to purge old files. Procrastinators are sometimes bulldogs who will sink their teeth into distractions and hold on for dear life. If you find yourself writing nasty letters to editors and politicians, or complaining feverishly on mailing lists about some software, you should calm down and spend your time elsewhere in more productive uses.
4. Make a "Don't-Do" list instead of a "To-Do" list. You'll have more time for the important things if you cut out the useless things. Your "Don't-Do" list might include:
Don't accept invitations to places I don't want to go.
Don't surf the web aimlessly.
Don't turn on the TV when I'm bored.
Don't eat when I'm not hungry.
Don't volunteer for every school function and church/temple committee.
Don't read the newspaper cover-to-cover just to "stay informed."
Don't accept magazine subscriptions even if they are free.
Don't darn socks--just buy new ones.
5. Let go of fear of procrastination itself. Do you wake up and say to yourself, "I know I won't get anything done today"? On a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, do you start thinking that the whole week is shot if you can't get over your procrastination hump? When you encounter this feeling, notice it in yourself, and let it pass. Don't give into the defeatism that accompanies such feelings. See item 7.
6. Be patient. Patience is not the same as sloth or procrastination. Patience is the absence of the fear that something won't happen in time. You might fear that you won't finish something in the time allotted, so you never start it. Give yourself permission to start something, even if it will take you multiple sessions to finish. If you don't finish, be patient with yourself. The skill most missing from childhood education is the ability to manage projects that require multiple days or weeks (or months or years) to complete. Rome wasn't built in a day.
7. Set realistic goals instead of setting yourself up for disappointment. Let's suppose you need to write a 20-page paper over the next 4 days. You know you can handle writing 5 pages per day. But at the end of the day one, you've written nothing. Now you have to write 7 pages per day for the next three days. Day two passes and again you've accomplished nothing. On day three, you think, "If I could just write 10 pages today, I can still finish in time." Day four arrives and you haven't even started. Where did you go wrong in this process? You might beat yourself up and think "I should have started on day one and then I wouldn't be in this mess." If you find yourself saying "I should have..." then stop immediately (see item 8). Your real mistake was on day three. On day three, there was still a realistic chance of writing 10 pages per day. By day four, you knew you couldn't finish. On day three, put the difficulty of the task out of your mind. Tell yourself that you are going to write 5 pages today, which was the original realistic goal. If you write 5 pages today, you'll know you can write 5 pages the next day. Then you can ask for an extension on the deadline, or deliver partial material, or work over the weekend, or late at night to finish it as needed. But remember the feeling on day three, and resolve to remember the strategy on day two the next time.
8. Don't beat yourself up. Better late than never. No one ever beat procrastination by beating himself up over it. Don't give into the phrase "I should have." Don't make it worse by saying "Next time I will..." when you know you will only repeat the pattern next time. Instead say, "I recognize that I failed because I waited too long to start. I waited to start out of fear of not doing the job right or on time (substitute your reason here). My procrastination has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I will start on the task right now without regard to worrying about perfecting or finishing it, and likewise without dismay over being late."
9. Don't burn yourself out or work yourself into a dead end. If you were training for a marathon, you wouldn't go out the first day and try to run a marathon. And you wouldn't run until you were injured or exhausted. You might instead stretch, warm up with a short walk, and maybe jog a mile. The next day, you might extend it a bit. But let's say you are tackling your tax return and you expect it to take a long time. When you finally get started, do you stay up late into the night until you are burnt out? Does your productivity suffer the next day? Do you then find yourself back in the same boat--dreading the task because it proved so painful? Here is a better way: Just as it is important to resolve to work on a project, it is important to resolve to stop. You might say, "I'll work on this for at least 30 minutes, but no more than 2 hours. After that, I'll get a good night's sleep." That way, you won't be so exhausted from the chore. This requires you to let go of the fear that if you stop now, you'll never finish the task. Trust yourself that you will get back to complete the task, rather than putting yourself on an adrenaline roller-coaster in which you get the "high" of doing the work and then crash afterwards.
10. Stop on a good note, before you complete a given portion of the project. If you're like me, you alternately procrastinate and then throw yourself whole hog into something. Any when you're working on something, you don't want to stop until it is done. You want to stay in the "flow" and complete it so you get the satisfaction of it being done and don't have to face it tomorrow. The trouble is, tomorrow there will be other tasks that you must begin and you may find yourself procrastinating over those. To jump start the next day's work, leave off in the middle of a given chore. For example, suppose you have drafted a letter. Leave off the signature block, and go to bed. In the morning, you'll be itching to finish the incomplete job, and you'll find it easy to add the signature block, print the letter, and send it. That will get you in "work mode" and ready for the next task. Contrast that with having finished the letter the night before. You might have gained a sense of accomplishment, but there is no tingling urgency pushing you to get back to work the next day. Quite the contrary, there is a pause that becomes an opportunity for procrastinating behavior to assert itself. Don't let it. When a scribe (sofer) writes a Torah on parchment, tradition dictates that he must end his day's work on a joyous sentence. End your work for the day on a joyous note of your unfinished symphony. It will help you get back to it the next day.
11. Don't confuse distractions for multiprocessing. All diversions are not created equal. Being able to multiprocess is often a good thing. For example, putting one job aside long enough to do another might give you insights into how to solve the first problem. So maybe if you are writing a book, switching gears to work on a different chapter might cure the writer's block you experienced with the first. On the other hand, consider a distraction such as checking your email. You might fool yourself into thinking you are "getting work done" when it is really just taking you away from your work. How do you recognize the difference? Multiprocessing or switching gears still accomplishes real work in a reasonable amount of time. It keeps you focused and "in the flow" and increases the ease with which you tackle your next task. On the other hand, distractions that might only consume 5 or 10 minutes might throw you off your game for hours or the rest of the day. Distractions make it harder to accomplish the next task. So if you can check email for 5 minutes and then get back to writing, by all means do so. But if taking a 5-minute phone call prevents you from returning to your original work, shut off the ringer and let the machine take a message.
12. Practice physical habits that counteract procrastination. If your biggest time sink is watching TV, practice shutting the TV off. Don't allow yourself to sit there and watch endless hours without conscious thought. Whenever you think "I shouldn't be watching so much TV" or "I have other stuff I should be doing", pick up the clicker (or better yet, get off the couch) and turn off the set. Then go do something less mind-numbing, such as going for a walk or reading a book.
13. Motivate yourself. The opposite of procrastination is not deprivation or slavery. Don't fool yourself into thinking that your procrastination is healthy or a validation of your personal freedom. Procrastination is a prison without bars, slavery without chains. Consider someone trying to diet who sees it as deprivation alone. That person will ultimately fail. The opposite of obesity is not starvation and deprivation, it is health and fitness. If you can replace excess food and inactivity with a healthful diet and moderate exercise, you will trade the "high" previously associated with food for the benefits of a healthier mind and body. To motivate yourself, ask yourself, "Why stop procrastinating? What benefit will I accrue?" When you wean yourself from procrastination, you will achieve a greater sense of peace, accomplishment, and self-esteem. Commit to making that trade-off, starting today, even if it means you can't keep blaming your spouse for your procrastination in the past.
14. Set yourself up for success. Take positive steps to increase your likelihood of success. That means getting appropriate amounts of sleep, avoiding drugs and alcohol, limiting TV time, getting some exercise, and eating healthy. If you were trying to lose weight, you wouldn't expect to succeed if you doubled your portion of ice cream and sat on the couch watching TV all day. Fighting procrastination is no different. Give yourself a fighting chance by increasing positive activitives and decreasing negative influences.
15. Know thyself but don't excuse yourself. I tend to do my best work between 4 pm and 10 pm. In the middle of day (say 10 am to 4 pm), I find myself most likely to procrastinate. But much to my surprise, I am very effective at working from 7 am to 10 am. So the important thing for me became to start work earlier in the day. Then I could easily work past 10 am, perhaps until noon, effectively, in a way I couldn't if I didn't start as early. That said, don't buy into your own evaluation of yourself such as calling yourself a night owl or insomniac. If you get on a typical work schedule, you'll find it easier to stay motivated because everyone else is working at the same time (or the kids are at school). If you don't start work until 5 pm when everyone is eating dinner and relaxing, it is easy to avoid your work altogether. So try to get on a 9 to 5 or similar schedule. If you consistently wake up early, your body will be tired at night and you'll have an easier time falling asleep before 3 am. (Also cut out late night snacking and afternoon naps.)
16. Make your own Sabbath. You don't have to be religious to realize that weekends are a good thing. Take at least one day a week to give yourself permission not to work. Recharge your batteries. Relax. Spend time with your family. Don't feel guilty. You might say "I have so much to do, I can't afford the time off," but that is merely self-deceptive and self-destructive behavior. If you schedule items during the weekend, it merely gives your procrastinating self permission not to finish them during the week. Force yourself to work effectively to finish something by 5:00 pm, not say "I can work until midnight." Force yourself to finish by Friday afternoon, not say, "I can do it over the weekend."
17. Reward yourself. Instead of eating lunch or playing a video game to avoid work, delay the gratification until after you complete a given task. For example, say to yourself, "I'll enjoy a nice walk outside after I send out three job search letters." That will help keep you motivated to complete the task and make the reward more enjoyable than had you merely avoided the work altogether. Like your parents taught you..."Dinner first, then dessert makes both taste better."
posted on Wed, 02 Mar 2005 at 11:33 | path: /advice | perma link
