- “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” Lincoln
- “Never put off for tomorrow, what you can do today.” Jefferson
- “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” daVinci
7 steps to cure procrastination
A recent NYT article suggests that procrastination has nothing to do with laziness but rather is more of an emotional matter than it is a matter of self control. It’s a way of coping with the negative moods which relate to particular tasks, moods like anxiety, frustration, self-doubt, boredom, anxiety.
That self-awareness is a key part of why procrastinating makes us feel so rotten. When we procrastinate, we’re not only aware that we’re avoiding the task in question, but also that doing so is probably a bad idea. And yet, we do it anyway.
“This is why we say that procrastination is essentially irrational,” said Dr. Fuschia Sirois, professor of psychology at the University of Sheffield. “It doesn’t make sense to do something you know is going to have negative consequences.”
She added: “People engage in this irrational cycle of chronic procrastination because of an inability to manage negative moods around a task.” Link
Over time, procrastination becomes a habit and according to Dr. Judson Brewer, Director of Research and Innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center, the way out of the cycle is to provide our brains with a “Bigger Better Offer” (or a “BBO)
In the case of procrastination, we have to find a better reward than avoidance — one that can relieve our challenging feelings in the present moment without causing harm to our future selves. The difficulty with breaking the addiction to procrastination in particular is that there is an infinite number of potential substitute actions that would still be forms of procrastination, Dr. Brewer said. That’s why the solution must therefore be internal, and not dependent on anything but ourselves.
In a recent Forbes article 14 Tips to Overcome Procrastination and How to Stick to them, the authors offer such suggestions as:
- Make a list and stick to it.
- Do the scariest thing first
- Get an accountability partner
- Break it down into bite sized chunks
- Don’t try to get it perfect
- Set daily top one and top 3 priorities every day
- Don’t try to get it perfect
What about you? Are you a procrastinator? If so, what do you procrastinate about and what do you do about it?
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