Procrastination: a sneaky productivity thief

What would you say is your biggest productivity thief?

Let me put it another way. You have a deadline or an important piece of work to write. But suddenly your full-to-bursting in-box seems terribly attractive, and you just have to research that lead on YouTube. All that dust behind your desk simply MUST be cleaned up this very minute. And the piles of paper that you have been happily ignoring for weeks suddenly HAVE to be filed or the world will literally come to an end. 

What am I talking about?

Procrastination

We are well into the new year, and how are you getting on with sticking to that one small change that will make a big difference? (More on this in last week’s blog). Chances are that you are fully aware of the importance of that change, and you are clear on the benefits thereof. Long term benefits – tick. However….short term benefits are possibly less immediately clear, and therein lies the problem.

If the change involves a specific task, chances are that task is not immediately appealing – it stands to reason that if it is, we would have been doing it successfully for ages now. Our bodies are more wired for instant gratification than long-term benefit, and so we find every reason under the sun to put off the one thing that we know will make a difference in the long term but is not a joyous activity in the short term. So too with deadlines and difficult work tasks. 

Procrastination is defined as:

the action of delaying or postponing something

Interestingly, one definition I found adds

…especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness

Ouch!

How true is this for you?

I have found that the best way to get mundane household tasks done – especially unpleasant ones – is to have a work project that I am putting off. Suddenly cleaning the black mould from round the window frames is hugely appealing when the alternative is doing my tax return.

Now this can of course be used to our advantage, but that is not really the point. The point is that procrastination robs us of productivity, saps our energy and can leave us feeling pretty rotten about ourselves. The cost can be high:

…Guilt about failing to achieve what we set out to or missing deadlines.

       ….Shame about our own lack of discipline.

           ….Anxiety about the task itself that is compounded as we continue to put it off.

And ironically, the chances are that once we START the task, it often turns out to be less difficult/onerous/stressful than we predicted.

The problem is not DOING the task, it is STARTING the task. For much more on the psychology of procrastination, see this fascinating (if long) article by James Clear. 

So what to do?

How do we break the procrastination habit?

First of all, we have to understand the impact of our procrastinating. 

I came across a fabulous series of questions on LinkedIn recently that get to the root of the impact of procrastination. They had been posed by David Lawson, Life coach and counselor. 

They really made me stop and think, and challenged me to look more objectively but also more deeply at my own procrastination habits. So for the next few weeks, these questions will form the basis of my own blog musings. 

This week, ask yourself this question:

The costs of procrastinating in my life have been…”

Be objective, honest and candid with yourself. Write down what you observe. Pay attention this week to all the times you procrastinate on a task, and notice WHY.

• WHAT are you putting off?
• What are you choosing to do instead?
• And what is the outcome of this – the task presumably is still waiting to be done, looking ominously at you, and how are you left feeling?
• What is the impact of putting off this task?

This is not to induce feelings of guilt or shame. But as always, until we understand our starting point, we are not in a position to make changes. 

So: What are the costs of procrastination for you this week?