Time Management Part 4 of 8 – Managing Procrastination

The goal of the series is to help you effectively prioritize and adopt consistent time management strategies. I will expand on these strategies but they include:

• Learning to reconcile time management with that of your personal or professional environment;
• Identifying your strengths and weaknesses and build a time management strategy adapted to your personality;
• Optimizing time and energy management;
• Maintaining and increase your credibility and control in managing demands and priorities.

So far, we’ve tackled the basics of time management and how to channel them into your time planning and your prioritization process.

Today’s topic is about the killer of all that hard work, PROCRASTINATION, and how to manage it.

What is Procrastination?

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, it is the action of continuously delaying something that must be done, often because it is unpleasant or boring.

In my opinion, procrastinating means making choices that give us immediate pleasure or satisfaction yet continually put us in a state of tension and/or stress.

Indeed, when we procrastinate, we don’t forget what we know we are supposed to do! We just decide not to do it. And very often, this haunts us while we procrastinate while feeding feelings of inadequacy or incompetence.

Different Types of Procrastination

Each with its own motive.

Fear of failure or fear of taking on a challenge.
This is often due to a lack of confidence or self-esteem when facing a new situation.

Perfectionism.
Perfectionists sometimes believe that there is a chance that the result will not be up to their standards.

In these 2 cases, procrastination can act as a self-preservation mechanism: you’re actually protecting your perception of self by avoiding confronting it with a reality that could potentially paint a different picture. I totally understand and I can be stuck in that thought cycle myself. It’s not an excuse for you to keep going though!

Lack of motivation.
Sometimes we lose motivation to do the task at hand in the moment and we think that we’ll get it back later, so we postpone. Except that we end up postponing indefinitely…

The last-minute adrenaline rush.
Certain people think they can only perform under pressure. They tend to wait until it’s almost too late to get the task complete in time and that’s when they typically get laser-focused on what they need to do.

Consequences of Procrastinating

Regardless of the type, 2 things always happen when people procrastinate:

• They believe they’re “still” doing something because they overload their agenda by replacing certain tasks with other tasks. Sometimes more urgent tasks yes, but most importantly, tasks that are more pleasant to them. Yet these activities nevertheless have less impact or importance than the ones being avoided.
• They almost always feel a sense of guilt, more or less admitted depending on the person, as long as they do not commit to action.

For these 2 reasons mainly, in my experience, I find that procrastinating eats up more mental headspace than just doing the thing. Dodging the mental guilt to remain in denial is just energy-consuming both mentally and physically. My advice to manage procrastination: the sooner you get onto the dreaded task, the sooner you’ll be free from it!

Kicking Procrastination to The Curb

Here are a few tips and tricks that have helped me over the years to gradually kick procrastination to the curb. Tick the ones you’re already probably doing and assess ways to incorporate the others to your daily workflow!

1. Subdivide the work to be done into smaller chunks of work
   • Set a deliverable for each, like milestone, as well as a deadline for it
2. Set aside time in your schedule for each chunk and focus only on that
   • Even if you don’t start on time, don’t move it and just get to it.
   • Don’t forget to apply a correction coefficient to the time allocated to account for the unexpected and/or your cognitive bias.
3. Complete the most difficult or least interesting tasks first. Get rid of mental dead weight right away!
4. Replace “I have to XYZ” with “I get to XYZ”. You’ve already determined the activities that serve your vision and each of them is an opportunity to get closer to it.
5. Let others (friends, teammates, etc) know about the tasks you have to accomplish and their timelines, and allow them to hold you accountable.
6. Focus on starting the task rather than envisioning how strenuous it could potentially be to complete it.
7. Time yourself: challenge yourself to complete the task in a set time. A time challenge can help gamify the completion of the task.
8. Think about how good it will feel to accomplish your tasks.
9. List the benefits of pursuing this task or project.
10. List the consequences associated with not pursuing it.
11. Reward yourself once the task is completed.
12. Enjoy the joy and relief of the post-procrastination moment each time you complete a task you have been putting off.

Now that you are inspired, do not stop there. Actually embed these tricks into your planning and prioritization systems. Indeed, to manage procrastination, you have to be purposeful.

TL;DR – Managing Procrastination

• You’re not defined by how perfect you do something, but rather if you completed anything that added value to anyone in a timely fashion. Better something with room for improvement than something perfect that only lives in your imagination.
• Procrastination actually requires more energy than doing the task you’re procrastinating in the moment. The more you procrastinate, the more energy you spend avoiding the guilt from it.
• In your systems, you want to remove the mental friction of planning or deciding on the next steps. So in your planning, embed provisions for emergencies, unexpected events and procrastination traps.