How to Stop Procrastinating
Steps to develop the Winning Habit of Getting Things Done.
It is 31st Jul — the last day for filing income tax return. You have an important project deadline to meet by 6 pm. You run helter-skelter post completion of your official work to file the Income Tax returns. The tax website is too slow and is crashing frequently. It is giving you some anxious moments. Somehow you manage to file the tax return by 10 pm and are relieved.
You promise yourself to read a book every week. You start enthusiastically and read about 10 pages of the book. Immediately there is a WhatsApp notification and you are drifted to the messenger. This happens every time you read the book. This way you never are able to compete the book in a week and start feeling guilty.
You check an email and think of responding it in the evening. You are engrossed in the office work and forget to respond to the email. You are reminded by sender after a few days and your non response is taken as an offence and the situation slowly snow boils to an escalation taking much of your time in defending your actions and stressing you out.
Well, there are the hours that you spent re-reading the same pages of the book or the same emails or other documents checking social media feed at frequent intervals, , and the time spent on other tasks that you could have been looked into next week
These examples of missing deadlines, rushing to meet them at the last moment, or pushing them off until you remember to do them are classic examples of procrastination. If you find yourself doing anything stated above, you are in a large company of “Procrastinators” — not a pretty company to keep though. It is estimated that 95% of the human population procrastinates in some form or the other.
Procrastination sees no levels. Everyone from a child to senior executives waste time in many ways like postponing important decisions, avoiding uncomfortable situations, checking their phone several times an hour, phoning acquaintances, attending to business unrelated to the organization. People who procrastinate come from all walk of life and occupation.
What is Procrastination?
The dictionary definition of “procrastinate” is “to postpone, put off, defer, prolong.” The word comes from the joining of two Latin words: pro, meaning “forward,” and crastinus, which means belonging to tomorrow.” Essentially “Forward it to tomorrow” mean “I’ll do it later.”
When you procrastinate you needlessly postpone, delay, or put off a relevant activity until another day or time. When you procrastinate, you always substitute an alternative activity for the relevant one. The issue is that the alternate activity may be irrelevant or inconsequential.
Why do we procrastinate?
The reasons for procrastination can be self-doubts, perfectionism, fear of failure, risk aversion, anxiety, rebellion, depression, or feeling vulnerable. It can be because we think an activity is either complicated, troublesome, fearsome, or boring to do.
1. Fear of Failure: This is one of the major reasons why we procrastinate. Fear of Failure prevents us from taking actions. We would like to postpone things and convince ourselves that we are not yet ready. This is also a perfectionist syndrome. Under the garb of being a perfectionist, we are not happy with the version of the work we have on hand and would like to come up with something better later. Alas! We never reach the “Something Better” stage.
2. Inaction: Most of us have ideas in mind but they are never brought to the execution stage. It stays on paper. This primarily happens as we have not set any goals once the idea has been formulated. This aimless approach ends up manifesting as a lack of decision-making and significant delays a project
3. Multi-Tasking: We try to accomplish more in less. This makes us take to multiple tasks at the same time. We spread thin and eventually are not able to complete any of the tasks. The to-do lists keeps on piling
How to overcome Procrastination?
Can we get rid of procrastination? Of course. It requires some work on self and inspiration to overpower the procrastination bug. If you are inspired from within, you will go to any extent to make it happen. We will discuss on how to find inspiration at some other time.
In his famous book “Eat the Frog”, Brian Tracy has identified 21 ways to avoid procrastinating and getting more done in less time. We will understand a few principles stated in the book
1. Clarity on Goals to be achieved: This very habit will help settle a lot of procrastination issues. The fact that we do not document our goals is the reason we do not achieve. We are satisfied with what ever has been our achievements in the absence of goals. The clearer you are about what you want and what you have to do to achieve it, the easier it is for you to overcome procrastination and get on with the job on hand. When our mind is not clear what we are supposed to do and in what order, procrastination sets in.
To support your goal achievement, start writing the goals first. Only 3–5% write goals and others just think of it. The power of written goals cannot be overemphasised. Read these goals aloud every morning and every other opportune time. This helps the brain rewire and move into an achievement space.
The goals need to be SMART i.e.
Specific
Measurable
Achievable / Attainable
Realistic / Relevant and
Timely / Time Bound
For each of the stated goals, put in a deadline. A goal without deadline has no urgency. It can be done anytime and hence is never done. Clearly written goals spring you to action.
2. Planning every day in advance:
“Action without planning is the cause of every failure.” — Alex Mackenzie
List the activities you are going to do every day. Planning the day in advance just takes about 10 minutes. This also helps you understand the activities that are in alignment to your goals and the ones that are not. You can slowly cut down on non-goal aligned activities and get more out of the day. Simply creating the list at the start of the day and striking off what has been achieved will considerably reduce the achievement backlogs.
3. 80–20 Principle:
Also known as the Pareto Principle, it states that 20% of your activities will account for 80% of your results. You need to revisit the list of work that needs to accomplished during the day and identify the 20% prioritised items first. If you accomplish these list items, around 80% to the results are accomplished. These prioritised items are the most valuable ones and may be the hardest and most complex to achieve. But the results for completing these tasks efficiently can be tremendous.
4. Put the pressure on yourself:
Make the things happen rather than waiting for things to happen. It is you and you only who can make it happen. No one else is going to come to your rescue. This will happen when you find your inner inspiration. When you are able to get the answer to “Why am I doing what I am doing”, you are in the inspiration zone. You become accountable to self. You do not need any third party to motivate you. You try complete the most important tasks today as if there is no tomorrow. By putting the pressure on yourself, you accomplish more. You become a high performance, high-achieving personality.
5. Take Massive Action:
This is easier said than done. The reasons that makes you procrastinate will not allow to you take actions. But you need to find ways and means to overcome those. You need to find your motivation to take actions.
6. Do the Most Difficult Task First:
One of the best ways for overcoming procrastination is to start work by doing your most difficult task first. The moment we try to take and complete the difficult task first, it gives us a sense of achievement. This makes the other tasks trivial and we are able to quickly complete those as well. This simple activity will make you feel powerful and an achiever.
7. Breaking down tasks:
Why we do not start a task or give it up midway? The answer is simple. We get overwhelmed by the sheer size of the work on hand. It looks too much for us. We convince our mind that “I cannot do it”, “This is not possible”. The best way to overcome this is to divide the big tasks into small achievable units. This tricks your mind and you look at the possibility of completing it. It becomes do-able. The moment you complete this do-able unit of work, you are thrilled and motivated to accomplish more. This triggers a dominoes effect.
8. Avoid Distractions:
Focus is the key to achieving the results we want. Time is not the most precious resource, FOCUS is. If we are focussed, we are able to accomplish more in lesser time. One of the techniques that has helped me to control distractions is turning the notifications off, on my mobile phone. Since the notifications do not popup, the urge to check also reduces, helping me concentrate. You can also uninstall the mobile apps that do not serve you any purpose. I uninstalled Twitter from my mobile and ever since that day I have added close to any hour to my day for doing something meaningful. Try Digital Minimalism.
Another issue that most of us are grappling with is multitasking, doing more than one task at the same time. Most of us pride in being multi taskers. The fact of the matter is that it is counterproductive and does not really serve much purpose. It definitely satisfies our EGO. Many of us fall into the trap of “juggling two or three tasks at the same time, so you finish one, but you’re still in the middle of the other,” says David Ballard, head of the American Psychological Association’s Centre for Organizational Excellence. That “never-ending stream of tasks” may make it feel like you’re never actually completing anything, which deprives you of the satisfaction of being done. “Take the time to wrap one thing up, put it away, take a breath, walk around for a minute and stretch before you step into the next thing so can move on having refreshed yourself,” Ballard says.
Try Pomodoro Technique:
As per Wikipedia, the Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks.
There are six steps in the original technique:
1. Decide on the task to be done.
2. Set the Pomodoro timer (traditionally to 25 minutes)
3. Work on the task.
4. End work when the timer rings and put a checkmark on a piece of paper.
5. If you have fewer than four checkmarks, take a short break (3–5 minutes) and then return to step 2; otherwise continue to step 6.
6. After four Pomodoros, take a longer break (15–30 minutes), reset your checkmark count to zero, then go to step 1.
Conclusion:
The importance of overcoming procrastination cannot be overemphasized. This single disease has stolen greatness from many capable individuals. It can restrict your potential and play havoc with your career. It can be detrimental to team work preventing the teams from realising greatness. It reduces morale of individuals or teams, and even lead to depression and job loss. It is imperative that we take proactive steps to overcome procrastination for leading a much more fulfilled life.
I was inspired to write this piece as I wanted to let you know how by applying the steps stated above, I changed my life from a procrastinator to an achiever. I want to just let you know that if I can do it, you can do it as well. I hope that this blog inspires and helps you shed the “procrastinator” label and achieve your fullest potential. You can be an achiever too. I am eager to know your comments, reactions and experiences on how you overcame procrastination and achieved something meaningful. Let it start coming! Until we meet the next time, take very good care of yourself. Stay safe.
