"No dejes para mañana lo que puedes hacer hoy” – Spanish proverb (“do not put off until tomorrow that which you can do today”)
“Mañana, mañana” – Another Spanish proverb (“tomorrow, tomorrow”)
You know the feeling. You’ve got some big project hanging over your head that needs to be done. It could be anything. Finishing an assignment, cleaning the house, writing a blog post about procrastination. “I’ll do it this afternoon”, you say to yourself. The afternoon rolls by, and nothing happens. “I’ll do it tomorrow”. Tomorrow comes, same thing. “I’ll do it by the end of the week”. The end of the week rolls around, still nothing. Sound familiar?
Some have argued procrastination is a form of emotional regulation, but it can have major consequences on people’s performance and well-being. Timothy Pychel calls it “the gap between intention and action” (Jaffe, 2013), and if our thoughts and actions are out of alignment, we suffer as a result. It has been associated with increased stress, anxiety, depression, and poor academic results, (Steel, 2007), and young people - 14-29 years old - are affected the most by it (Beutel et al., 2016).
Here are some useful strategies to help you overcome it:
1. Eat the frog first
“Eat the frog first” is a way of saying “get that one thing you least want to do out of the way first thing”. Once this is done, you will feel a sense of relief and freedom that your day is now open for more enjoyable or interesting tasks. By contrast, when we leave that boring or overwhelming task to later in the day, the anxiety and guilt begin to build, it starts appearing bigger than it is, and it either doesn’t get done or it carries a lot of stress when we do get around to it.
2. Set shorter deadlines
Yes, shorter deadlines. Research has shown that when we set a longer deadline for a task, whatever that task might be, we tend to assume that more time and resources need to go into it, which can make it seem bigger than it really is, which can make it seem overwhelming, so we put it off and make matters worse. Set yourself shorter deadlines where possible (Zhu, 2018).
3. Break it down into smaller chunks…
…and then break those chunks down into even smaller chunks. If, for example, writing your whole assignment seems like too much, then commit to one page. If that’s took much, one paragraph. If that’s too much, just write one sentence. I remember staring down my honours thesis and feeling overwhelmed, and the advice that made the biggest difference was my convenor encouraging us to work on it a tiny bit each day. Whatever that looked like – some days it might have been simply organising notes, other days writing one sentence, other days could be a whole chapter. Motivation, more often than not, comes after we start something, not before.
4. Set up a reward system
You are perfectly capable of training your own brain like a dog. Rather than go to the shiny object that’s screaming out for your attention right now, make a deal with yourself that you will look at it, eat it, experience it, whatever it is, after you’ve done that thing you least want to do. Remember to honour the pact on both ends – do the task, and don’t renege. Also, make the reward proportionate to the task. For example, studying for 10 minutes doesn’t open up a five-hour YouTube rabbit hole, but if you’ve just finished your biggest assignment for the year, you deserve more than a pat on the back.
5. Shift your inner dialogue
Using the words “I have to” or “I should” is not helpful. They create a tyrant-slave mentality, and eventually, the slave rebels. The reality is that no one really has to do anything, and while there are a lot of things that would really affect us negatively if we didn’t do them, everyone still has a choice. Framing the language along the lines of a “choice” is much more effective. For example, “it would be in my best interests if I did this assignment”, or “if I clean my room, I will feel better”. A simple trick is to shift from “I have to” to “I get to”, or from “I should” to “I could”.
As someone with ADHD and a master procrastinator, I’ve found these to be really helpful. If you have any of your own tips, drop them in the comments below
References
Beutel, M.E., Klein, E.M., Aufenanger, S., Brähler, E., Dreier, M., Müller, K.W., Quiring, O., Reinecke, L., Schmutzer, G., Stark, B., Wölfling, K. (2016). Procrastination, distress and life satisfaction across the age range - A German representative community study. PLoS One. 11(2) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0148054
Pychel, T. (2013). Why wait? The science behind procrastination. Observer, 26(4). Cover story. Association for Psychological Science. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/why-wait-the-science-behind-procrastination
Steel P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: a meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological bulletin, 133(1) 65.
Zhu, M. (2018). Why we procrastinate when we have longer deadlines. Harvard Business Review. 29thAugust. https://hbr.org/2018/08/why-we-procrastinate-when-we-have-long-deadlines
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