Overcoming Procrastination
A slightly off-topic post, but one that should be highly relevant to most professionals: overcoming procrastination.
Since most professionals have a high degree of control over their activities and schedules, they very often fall victim to procrastination.
Last night I read an brilliant article in the New Yorker reviewing a collection of essays on procrastination – and how to overcome it.
The excellent business about the book is that it presents a variety of uncommon viewpoints on procrastination (rather than one dogmatic view) and hence offers a range of potential solutions.
Here’s a quick summary of some of the major viewpoints and my experience and thoughts on how to use each one to overcome your own procrastination.
Viewpoint: Procrastination happens when you’re overwhelmed. You have so much on your plate that doing any specific task doesn’t seem like it will help – so you place off the tasks and do something trivial as a replacement for.
Thought: Take a radical review of your tasks and cut out those that aren’t unquestionably essential. get down to a psychologically manageable task list. And in future, only take on essential jobs.
Viewpoint: You procrastinate with something if subconsciously you don’t reckon it’s worthwhile.
Thought: Sometimes your subconscious is right. If there’s a particular task you’re avoiding, take a excellent look at whether it really is value doing.
Viewpoint: You procrastinate when you don’t realise the full impact of doing so. In other words, if you realised how much hurt you’re really doing by avoiding the task, you’d get on and do it.
Thought: Make sure that before adding tasks to your “to do” list you’ve properly assessed what you’re required to do and the impact of doing/not doing it. Often I find that I’ll write down actions but not really reckon them through and so I don’t realise what impact delaying them has. Make sure you break down huge tasks into particular steps – it’s much simpler to procrastinate huge, fuzzy things than specific actions. Probably also a excellent thought to remind yourself of the impacts on a regular basis too when reviewing your to-do list.
Viewpoint: Procrastination is a natural condition that’s nearly impossible to overcoming by your own willpower.
thought: Use external rules and help to get you to stay on track. Make deadlines and commit to them publicly. Find an accountability partner who you can discuss progress with your goals with. Join a mastermind group who will support you (this has really worked for me – see my blog post on Mastermind Groups for details). Block yourself from distractions (head to a room with no TV, use Freedom to block the internet etc.)
My take is that there’s not one simple cause of procrastination – so there’s not one best way to beat it. But by looking at some of the uncommon thoughts above you should be able to find something that helps you.
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Overcoming Procrastination is a post from: Get More Clients in Less Time: Practical Strategies, Proven Results