How To Overcome Procrastination
“There are seven days in a week and someday isn’t one of them”. (Famous quote)
It is often said that “procrastination is the enemy of success“. We all do it, we know it’s wrong but we still do it. Some people are better at managing procrastination then others. Let’s dive into what procrastination really is and how to overcome it.
What is procrastination?
Procrastination is avoiding or delaying completing a task that should be done. It comes from the Latin verb procrastinare where “pro“ means “forward” and “crastinus” means “belonging to tomorrow“.
Why do we procrastinate?
The simple answer is because it’s easy to do. Human nature makes us gravitate to things that are easy and fun. So naturally, overcoming procrastination is going against human nature and hence is hard and boring. Putting off a necessary task is much easier than stopping your current task to start a new task, even if it doing the new task won’t take a long time to do. This is why it’s so much easier to watch ”just one more video“ than it is to start working on that presentation that’s been inching closer.
The thing is, we can never truly beat procrastination. However, we can become better at reducing how often we procrastinate. I still suffer from procrastination (for real; I planned to have this post done about 3 weeks ago) but I have become better at managing my procrastination and recognizing when I feel like I am likely going to procrastinate.
Here are some ways I came across that I use to manage my procrastination.
Recognize the problem
The first step is to honestly admit that you procrastinate. This may be incredibly easy or difficult depending on yourself. After this step, you need to understand that becoming better with procrastination will take a while and you have to be okay taking small steps. For example, let’s say you procrastinate 7 times a week. Well, for next week, aim to procrastinate only 6 times. It sounds weird but your goal is gradual improvement, not suddenly expecting not to procrastinate at all, which is impossible. Build on each minor success and improve upon those minor victories.
The 2-minute rule
I adopted this technique last year when I started noodling around with Google Calendar. David Allen popularized this concept in his book Getting Things Done. The 2-minute rule states that if a task takes less than 2 minutes, do it now. After the 2 minutes is up and you wish to stop doing the task, you are free to do so. There are two caveats though. First, the task has to be related to what you are currently doing, otherwise you end up doing unrelated 2-minute tasks that worsens your procrastination. For example:
“It’s time to sit down and work on this report. Oh, I just got a message from Philip asking me come to his birthday bash this weekend. It’ll take me 2 minutes to accept so I’ll just get that out of the way now. Oh yeah, that reminds me, I’ll need to buy him a gift. I’ll just quickly put a reminder on my phone to pick one up later. Also, I need to…“ You get the idea.
The second caveat is that the 2 minutes only involves the processing time, not the preparation time for doing the thing. This is so you don’t try to get away with doing less.
The whole idea behind the 2-minute rule is overcoming the hardest part of doing a task which is the beginning. I.e. the inertia. Once you actually start doing the task, after 2 minutes you would realize “Hey, this isn’t so bad after all. Since I’ve already started I can might as well keep going a little longer“. As I mentioned before, starting a new task is harder than continuing a current one.
The Pomodoro technique
This is a popular technique first used by university student Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s. He used his tomato-shaped kitchen timer (pomodoro is Italian for tomato) and set it to go off after 25 minutes, while doing some series of tasks. The technique caught on since then and is simple to do. This is how works:
Use a timer and set it to go off after 25 minutes
When the timer starts, do whatever task or series of tasks you need to do without any interruptions.
When the timer goes off after 25 minutes, you take a 5 minute break. This is a pomodoro.
After every 4 pomodoros, you take a 15-30 minute break and then repeat.
The reason the Pomodoro technique is so effective is because it is easy and reduces the likelihood of burning out, because of the numerous breaks interspersed between each work block. This is also good for tasks that can take unlimited amounts of time like studying for an exam, doing research for a project etc. There are variations to the standard Pomodoro methods like doing 1 hour of work and then taking a 10-15 minute break but you get the idea.
Parkinson’s law
Parkinson’s law states that “work expands to fill the time allocated for its completion“. This means that if you give yourself one hour to do the laundry, it will take you an hour to get it done, even if it will actually take you 30 minutes. This is why a lot of people give themselves several weeks to complete an assignment and then end up behind schedule because of overestimating the time they have.
To overcome Parkinson’s law, determine realistically, how long it would take you to do a task on an average day i.e. when you are not working optimally, since, when we plan things, we always assume we are working optimally and overestimate our abilities. Once you do this, give yourself slightly less time to work on the task. What I try to do is to cut down the time by about 25%. So, for example, if I tell myself I think it would realistically take me an hour to do the laundry, then I give myself 45 minutes to do it. Do some experimentation and adjust accordingly.
SMART Goals
Goals can be defined and set by making them “SMART”, which makes them more tangible. SMART is an acronym which means:
S- Specific
Specify what you are actually trying to achieve. This is your mission statement. Ask yourself questions about why, how, when you want to achieve this goal and be specific. The reason why many New Year’s resolutions fail is because they are incredibly vague. Let’s use the example that I would want to learn to speak French. I’ll explain why this is a bad goal further on in this post.
M - Measurable
Now you need to think of how you are going to measure whether you are achieving your goal or not. For example, when I said I want to speak French, would I say I met my goal by saying “Bonjour“? No, of course not, even if I did technically meet my goal. Having a metric allows you to easily evaluate yourself on achieving your goal. Did I make the Skype call on Sunday afternoon? Yes, I did, good, I’m on track with my goal.
A - Achievable
Identify what you need to do to reach your goal. What are the tools you may need? What obstacles might you expect to face and how do you plan on overcoming them? Most people hate problems because they don’t like going about figuring out the solution. But by doing the hard work at the beginning and addressing those problems makes you think “Oh, these are the obstacles I plan on facing but I have a list of solutions that I’ve thought out ahead of time so I can just try them.“
R - Relevant
Determine what the “big picture“ is in achieving this goal. What are the benefits and impacts in reaching this goal? Why is this goal important to you? The goal should align with you. If it doesn’t you may have to reconsider if this goal is actually achieving.
T- Time-bound
Finally, for a goal to be reached it needs to have deadlines. This is so you can assess whether by a predetermined date whether you have achieved your goal or not. Have mini-goals with deadlines that help keep you on track to achieve your ultimate goal. It’s best to write down your goals with definite timings rather than ”someday”. It really helps make things tangible and doable.
Also, an added step would be to lock yourself into your goal in some way, so that you are less likely to chicken out later.
Let’s make a SMART goal
So, let’s use an example to turn a vague idea into a SMART goal. Let’s say I wake up on Saturday morning, feeling unusually motivated and proclaim to no-one in particular:
“This year, I want to learn to speak French!”
It’s vague but it’s a start. Ok, so, I calm myself down, think methodically and then reformulate it into a SMART goal to become:
“I want to reach conversational level of fluency in French (CEFR B2 level). I want to do this because I love the French culture and I want to take a trip to Paris and live there for a year. I will learn 20 new words every week and find a way to use them in my everyday life. Also, every Sunday afternoon, I want to have a 10-minute conversation on Skype with a French native using what I’ve learnt so far in French, occasionally using English to get across points that I can’t quite get across yet in French. I will do a lesson in the Duolingo French course 3-4 times a week. I would also find some phrasebooks to get me started on learning some basic phrases to get me started. I don’t know of any French speakers nearby to practise with and I don’t have enough to do a take an online French course but I can go on Couchsurfing and find a French speaker to practise with regularly. I will give myself a deadline of December 31st to achieve this goal. As an added bonus to “up the stakes”, I will email my friend [] now who does podcasts so that on January 1st, I will go on a live podcast and have an interview with a French native in French about my life and my thoughts on the latest news”.
Much better! This goal is well-detailed, clearly establishes my primary goal of reaching B2 level of fluency (rather than just becoming “fluent“), explains why I want to learn French, describes how I will continuously gauge my progress, the obstacles I expect to face (and how I plan to overcome them) and gives it a deadline. The part about the interview really helps me get a move on now that there is the real risk of failing if I don’t meet my goal. If you set up your goals in this way, I guarantee that you are more likely to achieve them and also less likely to back out from them.
Increase friction towards time-wasting activities
The last point is to make it more difficult and annoying to do time-wasting activities and make it easier to the tasks you want to do. A good example is let’s say you watch TV too much and want to increase your upper body strength by lifting dumbbells. You can increase the friction towards watching TV by removing the batteries from the remote or by unsubscribing from your TV channel provider. Also, you can keep the dumbbells next to the couch so that it is always nearby to you. By doing this, you are making it difficult for you to do the time-wasting activity and removing the barriers for you to do the good habit. This is key especially when your motivation is low such as coming home from work when you are tired and temptations to slack off are high.
Hopefully, some of these thoughts have resonated with you and you’ll give them a try in your quest for living fulfilling, productive lives.
Kuwa salama na kukuona karibuni hivi! (be safe and see you soon!)
