May 4th, 2024 – May The Fourth Be With You – How To Beat Procrastination
You may not be able to actually use the Force, but you can definitely figure out how to force yourself past your procrastination! This Star Wars day, I want to talk about forcing away your procrastination.
I am a busy person, with ADHD. Basically, this translates to, “I have one million things to do, and I will probably accomplish two of them.” At least, that’s what it used to translate to. I’ve done the work now in figuring out how to avoid my procrastination and make my tasks more desirable to me. But that’s only what worked for me.
There are a million and one tips on how to beat procrastination on the internet, and as you can imagine, they’re not all universal. You need to truly understand yourself and what will work for you, otherwise you’re just wasting your time. This is a lesson that I learned the hard way, but I’d like to help you avoid making the same mistakes. That’s why I have separated these tips into different systems. Ideally, this will help you focus more on the methods that will help you specifically, rather than trying everything only to find out you’re not even working to the root of the problem.
With that in mind, let’s get into it!
First, Identify Your WHY NOT
As I mentioned, the reason you procrastinate your tasks is not the same as your neighbor. You need to understand what it is that is deterring you from starting or finishing your task.
The root of procrastination tends to be fear. This is not the only reason, but it is one of the major contributing factors to why people don’t start or finish a task. The first thing you need to do is identify the root of your own problem. Identify the answer to some of these fundamental statements:
I am avoiding this task because _____________.
I’m afraid that ________________.
I feel (insert emotion here) because ____________.
And don’t let yourself get away with answers like, “Because I don’t want to.” No. Look deeper. Think harder. Why don’t you want to? What outcome are you avoiding? Why are you avoiding it?
Once you’ve figured out the answer to these questions, you can go about addressing your fears in a way that makes them much less daunting.
It may seem obvious, or even a little bit silly. But if you’re serious about finding the reason for and beating your procrastination, looking inward is where the journey starts.
Second, Pick A System
I’ve separated the tips and techniques you can use into systems based on what could be fuelling your procrastination, or what could be a useful tool to move forward. Some people are motivated by consequences, others by rewards. It can be helpful for some to distract themselves into doing the task, while a social aspect might be what drives another. There are a few different systems that might be what you’re looking for.
Consequence-Based Systems
This is one of the more common ones. People are motivated when they feel there is a negative consequence if they don’t do the task. You clean your house so you don’t get bugs. You meet your deadlines at work so you don’t get fired. However, the issue is that when you are the one setting the consequences, you’re likely to simply refuse to go through with them. This can be an issue, and it takes self-discipline to follow through with yourself.
The goal of consequence-based systems is to take something away from yourself that you really want. The risk of not completing the task has to be (in your mind) greater than the reward of short-term satisfaction with pushing the task off.
Some examples of this include:
But again, this is where your self-discipline comes in.
If you really want to beat procrastination but don’t think you can trust yourself to implement your own consequences, there’s an app for that. In fact, there are a number of apps online that allow you to “hit yourself where it hurts,” so to speak, and will enforce consequences for your actions. If you want to learn more about that and the apps you can use, Make Use Of wrote a great article outlining some of the apps you can use to keep yourself on track.
Reward-Based Systems
I have noticed these systems are easier for people to follow because it is a lot easier to reward yourself than it is to enforce consequences on yourself. There are many different types of rewards you can focus on.
Cause and effect rewards are items given to you when you complete something. If you finish reading 50 pages, you can play a game you like for 15 minutes. A friend of mine in University used to put M&Ms on her textbook pages so when she reached that spot, she ate the M&M. She still swears by this method for beating procrastination so many years later.
There is also a concept developed by Katherine Milkman called Temptation Bundling. This is where you pair a thing you don’t like, with a thing you do in order to make the annoying task more bearable. These include things like only listening to music when you’re cleaning your house, or only eating your favorite candy when you’re reading a textbook. You don’t perform the task you enjoy at any other time, except when the annoying or distressing task is being completed at the same time. This enforces the idea that the difficult task is more bearable.
If you want to read more about the particulars of Temptation Bundling, here’s an article by Todoist that explains it in detail.
You may also be motivated by delayed gratification. Delaying the reward you receive can make you second guess if you truly want/need it. Things such as when you feel the need to take a break, count to ten. After ten seconds, reevaluate. If you still want the break, take it. If you don’t, keep working. This can help you truly ask yourself if you NEED the reward, or if you simply want to procrastinate.
Acceptance Systems
I like to think of these systems as systems of acceptance, because to beat your procrastination, you’re taking the fear out of the task itself and replacing it with much more manageable goals. As I said earlier, procrastination is often based on fear. In order to truly overcome that, you have to remove the fear element. There are different ways to do this based on what it is you are truly scared of, but there is merit to the idea of simply making the task itself seem less daunting.
Try things like limiting your workload. Don’t give yourself a list of ten things to achieve in a day. Instead, reduce the list to two or three things that are easily achievable, and hold a certain level of importance.
In the same vein, you can narrow your tasks down to one. Give yourself one goal to accomplish in the day. You have a full 24 hours, and only one task to do. This gives you a lot more freedom to achieve it when your brain and your body are on the same page.
In order to push your brain in the right direction, you can do Time Boxing techniques. I mentioned time boxing in an earlier post about managing your time. It is a useful technique for many reasons. Focus all of your time, energy, and attention on one specific task, but only for a limited period of time. Set yourself a goal, and do nothing else but that task during that time. This gives your brain a very easily achievable time frame so you don’t feel overwhelmed by how much time a task could potentially take. You eliminate all of the guesswork.
Distraction-Based Systems
Trying to make yourself do something you know you hate is like pulling teeth out of your own head. Convincing your brain that you need to do it is going to feel impossible even if you know the goal of beating procrastination is worth it. So, focus on distracting yourself into enjoying the task, or at least not hating it so much. Try adding game elements to your task. This is a technique called Gamification, and there are so many different ways to do it. Give yourself a point system, race against the clock, or anything else you could normally find in a playable game. There are also apps you can use that make these tasks much more fun. Learn more about gamification, or find an app that can help you make these things more fun.
Alternatively, you can try switching between tasks. Move between a couple of different tasks in order to keep your mind from hating one thing too much for too long. I know if I do a task I hate for a long time, it just progressively makes me angrier and angrier. However, if I’m able to walk away from it and do something different for a while, it focuses my mind on something else. Even if that is something else that also makes me mad, I still feel I can reset for when I need to re-engage with the original task.
Planning-Based Systems
These are some of the systems that work best for me. I need to see my day organized and planned out. Even if my schedule has tasks on it that I don’t like. I feel better knowing I have set time aside, I know when it needs to be done and how long I need to do it for, and I know there are better things waiting on the other side.
Planning-based systems revolve around the idea that you’re getting ahead of your procrastination, and making it more difficult to start procrastinating in the first place. Do things like manipulating your environment. Eliminate things in your immediate vicinity that will distract or entice you from completing the task. This could mean putting your phone somewhere you can’t see it, or staying alone inside of a quiet space.
Another great way to push yourself into a task is creating a ritual. I use my Google Home and my phone routines to really beat my procrastination here. When it comes time to start a task, my Google Home is on a routine timer, where it will begin the task for me.
If I have decided I am sitting down to edit a transcript at a certain time, when that time comes, my devices spring into action. My phone goes from active to Silent or Sleep mode automatically. My Google Home starts playing music that motivates me to get up and get to my computer. I even have a routine that flashes lights at me if I snooze it too many times. You can also use much less technologically dependent techniques to do this, such as enforcing a 5-second-rule, (“in five seconds, I will start the task,”) or playing a specific song.
If you’re into long-term planning, you can set out how completing each of these individual tasks will help you achieve a goal further in your future. Things like, if you go to the gym every day and complete this specific routine, you will hit your fitness goal in this amount of time. And then you can mark it off as you do it to watch yourself get closer to your goal.
Social-Based Systems
Sometimes, you just need some help from your friends. It is a lot easier to achieve your goals if you are not the only person involved and/or committed to them.
Something you can start off with is to tell everyone your goal. Even if it is just something small. No one wants to have an audience for their failure, and if people know what you intend to do, it will prompt them to follow up and ask you questions about it. This can motivate you to do the task on your own time in anticipation of answering their questions when they come. Fear got us into this, it may as well help get us out.
A less fear-based approach to beat your procrastination would be to have someone in your corner who participates in the task with you. For people with ADHD, this can be seen as body-doubling. You have a person perform the same task with you at the same time, or even just there with you, so you can feel more motivated to complete it. I used to do this for the gym. When I was starting my fitness journey, I had a workout partner who went with me every day. If I wasn’t in the mood to go, I’d have to admit to her that I had no good reason for avoiding my goals. I also didn’t want to feel like I was letting her down by not going, because I didn’t want to poorly influence her to also stop trying to achieve her goal.
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Now, ideally, you’ve read the whole post. But, I didn’t write it with that goal in mind for you. I wrote this so you can focus on the systems you think are going to be the most effective for you and read that section rather than everything.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s blog post! If you did, make sure to leave a comment down below and check back for a new post on the Next Step Scopist blog. Happy Star Wars Day everyone! May the fourth be with you!
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