Positive Education: Do you procrastinate?
We are all guilty of procrastinating… Our inner voice tells us we are ‘lazy, unfocused, have no goals or even worse...that we are bad’!
It is ok to ‘sometimes procrastinate’. YES have permission!
I now call it thinking time! Sometimes I might actually need this pause, to help me hear the other voice warning me that I need to refocus, pause and breath.
Sometimes going for a walk, decluttering my space or just doing something different is exactly what we need for an hour or two. It often helps us to see exactly what my ‘next step should be’.
Procrastination can also become a habit. We feel the fear and we get into a routine of immediately occupying our mind with mindless ‘web surfing’, ‘social media’ or displacement activities - they distract us and we PROCRASTINATE.
When a ‘habit’ such as procrastination creeps in and it stretches beyond one day to the next and then to a week and so on.. This is where the self-loathing builds, it taints everything and we start making promises to ourselves that we can’t keep!
If any of this sounds familiar then “What’s the Cure”?
A couple of thoughts and tips:
1) Find your why…
Examine why you want to do whatever it is you are putting off. It’s scary starting new work. Changing our lifestyle can be uncomfortable. If we take a risk, there is always a chance we could fail, be mocked, or be ignored. So it feels easier to do nothing at all!
But there is something else we should fear: What will happen if we don’t do the thing we want or need to do??
Two questions every procrastinator should ask:
What’s the worst thing that could happen if I do this thing?
What’s the worst thing that could happen if I don’t??
2) Write down your excuses
Do it badly - just do it!
3) Set tiny goals
Set a tiny goal, one that’s so easy to do it’s harder to avoid doing it. Some days that’s all you’ll do. But other days, you’ll find you sit down to write 100 words and write 5000. Or you set out for a 10-minute walk and be out for an hour.
4) Break the task down into baby steps
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Once you have your baby steps mapped out, set milestones, and deadlines for hitting those targets. Celebrate when you reach them.
5) Track it
One of the best ways to change behaviour is to ‘keep a record’
"Jerry Seinfeld famously marked a cross on a wall calendar every day he did some writing work. After a while, he explained, you simply don’t want to break that satisfying chain of crosses, so you do the work”
6) Start before you’re ready
The trouble is, the planets are never perfectly aligned, and life gets in the way of the best-laid plans.
7) Do sweat the small stuff
Make a list of all of the niggling jobs that occupy your mind. The chores to do. The email to reply to. The drawer is full of junk to sort. The bills to pay. The text message to send.
Every day, set a timer for 10 minutes, and just get on with crossing them off...ok?
8) Get some accountability
Make an announcement on social media. Ask a friend to check-in, and keep you on track.
9) Set rules
Author Neil Gaiman has a rule to help him with his writing. When he sits down to work, he has two choices. He can stare out of the window, or he can write. No web surfing. No chatting. No reading, playing with his son, or any other displacement activity. After a while, he explains, writing is usually just more interesting than staring into space, so he’ll start to work...
This resistance never goes away. But we do have a choice to make daily.
"We either give into it, and we procrastinate endlessly. OR we do battle with it, and we make the work we want to make"
10) Practice forgiveness
If you’ve been procrastinating for a while, you’ll feel bad about it. You’re probably beating yourself up, comparing your output with others, and angry that you’ve wasted so much time. Draw a line under this now and 'move on'.
11) Change your environment
Remove distractions. Place what you need to do, whatever you want to do in easy reach. Make it as easy as possible to do the thing you want to do.
12) Lastly... Don't do it!
If after all of this, you are still procrastinating...consider not doing the task at all. Perhaps it's not right for you?
Let it go! Learn to love what you have, not what the world says you should want. Find what brings you joy and do more of that.
