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6 Tips to Beat Procrastination

6 Tips to Beat Procrastination
Part 1 – understanding what procrastination is
Part 2 – Beating Procrastination
  1. Meditation
  2. Just Do It
  3. Set Up Your Environment for Success
  4. Habit Formation/Implementation Intentions
  5. Energy Levels
  6. Affect Regulation Training

There’s nothing worse than looking back on a carefully planned out week and realising you’ve not adhered to it one bit. Sure, some of this will be due to interruptions and unexpected occurrences. Tasks you didn’t anticipate come up, spontaneous social events put your plans on hold but… That’s just one side of the story. The other is procrastination.

The former unexpected, unanticipated reasons for your detour away from your perfectly planned week are understandable – and even desirable depending on your perspective on time management. However, I think we can all agree that procrastination is highly undesirable and can be quite a blocker to achieving our goals.

As our ability to achieve our weekly objectives compounds over time, so does procrastination. So you can see procrastination can leave you in a much worse position as its effects compound over time too.

Many of the ideas and tips mentioned in this blog come from my reading and listening to Tim Pychyl, author of “Solving the Procrastination Puzzle”. I would strongly advise listening to or reading Tim’s material for a more detailed view on the topic as well as for more statistics-backed evidence that back up his claims.

Tim’s work, combined with my own experiences of procrastination and advice garnered from an array of other self-improvement material has shaped the way I view and tackle procrastination.

Part 1 – Understanding What Procrastination Is

procrastination sleep

Understanding what procrastination is and why we do it is key to avoiding it.

An Emotion Regulation Issue

procrastination pandora's box

Tim phrases it as an ‘emotion regulation issue’ rather than a time management problem. Essentially this means we escape the unpleasant emotions we encounter when we think about starting a difficult task by seeking immediate pleasure. Often this is through the use of social media, alcohol, gaming or other activities producing a similar dopamine rush. Tasks that are unfulfilling, or high in stress are those which are most likely to trigger procrastination.

Unfounded Confidence in Our Future Self to Action Tasks

procrastination unfounded confidence

Another important point from Tim is that we have a bias when thinking about our ability to action something in a future state. The example he gives is waking up. You set your alarm with the perfectly good intention of waking up early, even though you’re late to bed that night. In your head, you think that will be fine – easy peasy. In reality, you wake up in a groggy state, and immediately hit the snooze button wondering what you were thinking when you set your alarm.

Your expectation was very different from your reality. It is often this that causes us to say the following to ourselves – which Tim defines as the procrastinator’s mantra:

“I don’t want to, I don’t feel like it, I’ll feel more like it tomorrow”

But in reality there probably isn’t a better time to start a task you’ve planned to complete at the present time – than the present time (aka the time you’ve strategically planned it for).

Levels of Empathy Towards our Future Self

procrastination helping hand

Another interesting observation that Tim puts forward is that people are more likely to procrastinate if they view their future self as a stranger. If future Alex is detached from how I view myself now, I am unlikely to have empathy for my future self. With no empathy for my future self I may as well let future me do all the hard work. Which results in procrastination. In contrast, those with a high level of empathy for their future self, avoid procrastination and aim to get tasks done in the present so their future self isn’t under pressure.

For a clear example of the point above, Tim points to the Simpsons and Homer’s famous words: ‘That’s a problem for future Homer, man I don’t envy that guy’.

Part 2 – Beating Procrastination

1.) Meditation

procrastination meditate

Meditation is key to emotion regulation which is known to cause procrastination. I strongly recommend the Waking Up app created and maintained by Sam Harris. By meditation, I mean understanding clearly key truths and principles about ourselves and glimpsing these regularly. This is in contrast to listening to relaxing music and trying to avoid thoughts about the many stresses in our lives – which is how I viewed and practised meditation before stumbling upon Sam Harris’ work.

I also believe that meditation in this manner is pivotal to healthily viewing time management and more on that can be found in my earlier blog post ‘How to Avoid the Mental Strain of Time Management’ which draws on the ideas of Oliver Burkeman and his book ‘Time Management for Mortals’.

2.) Just Do It

procrastination just do it

How patronising and also ‘no-shit Sherlock. Fair play. But hear me out. Once we start the task we have been putting off, or thinking about putting off – it is rarely as bad as we feared. When we attribute certain qualities to a task we haven’t started, such as the level of stress, tediousness, fulfilment, length of time it will take to complete, these attributes are more often than not completely wrong. In a lot of cases we simply don’t have enough information to accurately assess this.

Once we start a task, even if we haven’t had a chance to finish, or even get halfway through, we then have more chance to accurately assess these attributes and that in itself results in less emotional discomfort (at least from my personal experience). Part of the emotional discomfort in my own experience comes from the ‘not knowing’ – the lack of understanding of what must be done to complete the task.

Secondly, just from starting the task (even if 10 minutes is all that is spent on it), we have laid a marker down. We have made progress. I remember watching a great Ted-Talk about someone who achieved an incredible amount from spending a very small amount of time on a task consistently each day. These small efforts compound and result in a big result over a big enough time scale.

I’ll link another article here that explains the above in more detail. But if you can hear yourself thinking ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’, spend 5 minutes on it now and then leave it for tomorrow. I think you’ll be surprised at how many times you end up becoming engrossed in the task in those 5 minutes.

3.) Set Up Your Environment for Success

procrastination environment

Why rely solely on willpower and emotion regulation to complete your important tasks when you can use your environment to your advantage? Ever noticed how a messy room makes you want to do nothing – and a tidy environment makes you want to engage in productive activity?

Our environment can have a massive influence on our productivity levels and ability to stick to our routines and daily/weekly plans. Set your rooms up strategically for success. Set your workspace up so everything is available to you with minimal effort. Keep your desk tidy – have your charger wires clipped to your desk so you’re ready to go.

I have my MIDI interface on a shelf under my desk with the wire already plugged into my guitar and my headphones clipped to the side of the desk to encourage me with my habit of practising the guitar every morning. It really works.

Have your kitchen pans hung up or easily accessible in a draw to encourage you to cook. Set up your bedroom for optimal sleep. Leave your book by your bedside if you want to read more.

This is a strategy I use as much as possible. It reduces the emotional discomfort felt by the thought of a task and helps you to just do it! It also massively helps with habit formation.

4.) Habit Formation/Implementation Intention

procrastination habit formation

Habit formation is another key way to reduce procrastination. This can be a combination of using your environment to set you up to for success with your habits and setting up what Tim calls implantation intentions. An example of an implementation intention is to say “I will carry out task X when I complete my already ingrained habit of Y”. For example “I will start to floss after I brush my teeth”. Hopefully, you brush your teeth already.

This is also a very well-known technique mentioned in the popular book Atomic Habits. It’s essentially creating a new habit that piggybacks off an already well-established habit. It serves as a reminder for us to complete the task, rather than just expecting ourselves to remember at some random point in the day to do our new desired habit.

We can also set ‘implementation intentions’ for ad-hoc tasks which we don’t require to be ingrained as a habit. Piggybacking the ad-hoc task off an already well-established habit in a similar way.

Habit formation can also free up our mental and physical energy so we can spend it on tasks that require high effort (also reducing decision fatigue). This is because habits once formed are performed subconsciously. They often become muscle memory.

5.) Plan your difficult/important tasks for when you’re likely to be at your best.

procrastination energy levels

This technique can help you to avoid putting off big tasks. Your energy levels deplete throughout the day and it’s unlikely you’ll be in the best state to crack on with a big work project (particularly one you haven’t started yet) in the evening (or even the afternoon!).

I’m a big advocate of afternoon naps. I’m sure everyone is familiar with the afternoon slump which tends to hit us somewhere between 1-3pm. The afternoon nap can often refresh us and give us a second wind. Almost like having two mini-days instead of one.

So plan your biggest, most important activities for the morning, or for just after your afternoon nap. This way you’ll be in the best emotional and physical state to achieve them and be less likely to say “I don’t feel like it now, I’ll feel like it tomorrow”.

6.) Affect Regulation Training.

procrastination art

Affect Regulation Training is a set of 7 skills that can be used to help regulate emotions. By pracitising these skills the idea is we become better at regulating emotions and making better decisions. We won’t feel as strongly associated with the mental discomfort that comes with the thought of starting a task. We’ll be able to look past the initial friction and just do it, because we know that instead of short-term pleasure we’ll get longer-term fulfilment by actioning them.

The 7 skills are:

  • Muscle Relaxation
  • Breathing Relaxation
  • Non-judgemental perception and description of one’s feelings
  • Acceptance and tolerance of undesired feelings
  • Compassionate self-support when dealing with such feelings
  • Constructive analysis of the causes and consequences of one’s feelings
  • Active modification of one’s feelings towards a desired direction.

 

This manual goes into further detail about these skills and how exactly they can be trained. From my personal experience, step 2 is most effective at regulating emotion in the moment. Steps 3, 4 and 5 come from long-term meditation practice.

Step 6 can often be done as part of planning the week. At least I try to include this informally as part of my weekly planning where I reassess and readjust depending on how the previous week’s plan went.

For point 7 see the below: “When we are under stress, the amygdala initiates the release of stress hormones into our brain. These stress hormones can weaken areas in the brain including the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, which play important roles in our ability to use problem-solving techniques to modify our emotions.” Which is an excerpt from the manual mentioned above manual on affect regulation training.

This section of the Affect Regulation Training aims to allow us to modify are emotions to think more logically. How, I’m not sure as I am not able to access this part of the manual or find much insight online. But I will update this blog when I have more information as it is something I would like to look into.

SUMMARY

Hopefully, above are some useful insights into dealing effectively with procrastination and sticking to your plans. I will endeavour to keep this article updated with any new information I come across. Specifically, I will try to find more information on step 7 of Affect Regulation Training.

Many of the ideas discussed in the article are based on either personal experience or from Tim Pyhycl’s series in the Waking Up App titled “Solving the Procrastination Puzzle”. I’d highly recommend you listen to this to get Tim’s official take on all the above.

The information he provides is highly useful and actionable. In his series of talks on the waking-up app, the ideas are condensed into 10-20 minute audio clips that are easy to digest.

Leaving it there,

Cheers,

Alex

About The Author

alex@powerofplanning

Hi! I am a data analyst based in the UK, working primarily on CRM business functions. I started the Power of Planning blog as a way of improving my organisational skills, to help me prioritise my goals, and to become more efficient in my Job and my personal life :)

1 Comment

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