Welcome to the second installment of the new year new you series where we go through some of the most common goals and changes clients are looking to achieve in the new year. This week I'm tackling the ever present monster in many peoples
lives: procrastination.
Tell me if this cycle sounds at all familiar to you. You have a task that's been on your to-do list forever. This task has seen every notepad in your home, both digital and physical. It's never not in the back of your mind, that thing you need to do that you keep on forgetting. You're always too busy and then when there's finally some down time no way is it going towards doing that thing. So you just go through life toting around this task (or tasks) accepting that this might just be your fate.
Well I've got some good news for you, it doesn't have to be this way. You can totally become one of those people who does things as they come and doesn't constantly get hung up in the never ending limbo of procrastination. This year is going to be the year of getting sh*t done!
Start where we always start, which is asking why. Figure out if you are procrastinating out of fear of failure, overwhelm or perfectionism. Procrastination can almost always be linked to one or more of these three things:
overwhelm= break it down. Take whatever task you’re trying to accomplish and break it down into smaller parts
Fear of failure= adopt the mindset that you will most likely fail at many things, many times, many ways. Failure is also characteristically something that comes at the end of trying so if you don’t stop trying you can’t fail. Failing forward is also something to think about. If you try something and it fails, you now have information you didn’t have before so it becomes more an essential part of the process and less of a failure.
Perfectionism= progress is always better than perfection. If you are waiting for the perfect time or perfect idea you’ll be waiting around a while. Ideas and inspiration are energetic constructs and come with the flow of energy. Staying in your stagnant energy will just continue to block any new energy from coming your way. So get up and move!
Use the 5 minute rule. Commit to doing just 5 minutes of a task and once you get the momentum going, you’d be surprised at what you can get done.
Don’t lump the task you're avoiding in with all the other things you want to get done for the day. This will just add to the overwhelming sense of doing it and you’re more likely to settle for doing every other thing on the list but the one thing you actually needed to get done. Allow yourself the time and space to focus only on the one task you’ve been avoiding. You can even go as far as to say that the only thing you absolutely have to do today is your procrastinated task.
If you’re the kind of person to get distracted easily, get ahead of it by eliminating all distractions. Going to a coffee shop or library and turning your phone on silent can be a good way to give yourself the space to only focus on what it is that you need to do.
The Pomodoro technique is also a tool that works for a lot of people. This is when you break your time into 25 minutes of working and then a 5 minute break. After 4 intervals take a 15-30 minute break. This gives the brain measurable productivity and reduces the overwhelm you might feel about doing the task.
As with everything, bullying yourself out of procrastination won’t work the way that you think it will. Be kind with yourself and become more curious about why you behave the way you do rather than jumping straight to being cruel to yourself. Beating procrastination is not a one and done thing and it will take time to overcome coming up with excuses or reasons for why you push things off.
I think we can all agree that the things I've listed are not new concepts or ideas. But for some reason most people continue the struggle with procrastination despite having a tool or two to deal with it. You can have all the tools in the world but if you don't actually implement any of what you know, you'll never see any change. So decide how bad you want it and get a game plan for when you find yourself leaning into your same old excuses to push things off.
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