We all go through periods where we prefer to satisfy out short term need with a shot of dopamine when we know we should be working on something that will benefit us in the long term.
Procrastination is the act or habit of putting off something to a future time. It involves delaying what needs to be done, usually because the task is unpleasant or boring—or simply because delaying is an option.
We dream of many things but most dreams stay on the someday list forever. Some of us get into the planning mode and never get out of it. Some get into learning mode instead of doing. And some come up with excuses on why now is not the right time to do certain things. All these examples of procrastination.
In the short but action-packed book The Science of Overcoming Procrastination, Patrick King writes the science behind procrastination and the mindset shifts, tactics, and strategies we need to overcome procrastination. This post is a summary of this book.
- Anti-Procrastination Mindsets
- Psychological Tactics
- Strategic Planning
- Structuring Against Procrastination
- Take action
Anti-Procrastination Mindsets
Mastering the physics of productivity
- Once you start, you will tend to keep going on your task. So rather than wait for an enormous amount of motivation before starting, just go ahead and start small. You’ll find that your motivation will snowball into ever-larger amounts after you’ve started.
- The amount of work you’re able to do as a person has its limits, so if you want to make the most out of your effort, you need to start being conscious of where that work goes. Exert your force toward a single direction for its maximum acceleration.
- Deal with unproductive forces, which is to subtract, if not totally eliminate, unproductive forces. This strategy involves such actions as reducing the number of tasks you commit to, learning how to say no, and changing your environment in order to simplify your life.
Eliminating the paradox of choice
In the face of multiple options, you’ve been too paralyzed to do anything.
- Focus on one factor and willfully ignore everything else – instead of having to deal with countless criteria that can overwhelm you from making a choice, focus only on one or two vital factors and ignore the rest. That way, you have a clearer idea about which option is best for you, and you can select it faster too.
- Set a time limit on making a decision. Commit to making a decision within, say, two minutes, tops. Whatever decision you arrive at by the end of two minutes, stick with it no matter what. This defeats the paradox of choice by putting a cap on the amount of time you spend agonizing over which decision to make. It saves you from suffering the negative consequences of letting things pass you by and spurs you into the action necessary to realize your goals.
- Immediately choose a default option and stick with it if no better alternative comes up.Once you’ve selected one option as the default, you can set a short amount of time to try to find alternatives and weigh them against your default choice. If none of the alternatives measure up to your default, then you just revert to that default choice. That way, you’re ensured of having already made a decision beforehand, which you can simply follow through with once it’s time to act.
- Strive to satisfice your desires more often than not. Most of the time, you simply want something that is reliable and works. Suppose you are in a grocery store and you are trying to pick out the type of peanut butter you want. What should you shoot for here? Satisficing or maximizing? The same type of thinking should apply to 99% of our daily decisions.
Finding the right motivation
It’s possible that procrastinators are not inherently lazy or useless individuals; rather, they’re simply faced with tasks which do not match their skill levels or personal motivations.
- The key is in finding aspects of every task or project that you can care about. It’s all a matter of perspective. Since no one else’s reasons or persuasions can make you get to work, you’ll just have to create your own reasons for doing a task. Look for aspects in it that you enjoy or that show you what makes it worthwhile, and focus on those.
- By discovering an aspect of the project you’re intrinsically motivated to do, you’re less likely to procrastinate and you get to put in effort without needing to drag yourself to do it. Your intrinsic motivations, interests, and values are all clues to what will unleash the energy and talents you have toward productive ends.
Psychological Tactics
Don’t rely on your mood
- Instead of waiting for your mood to spark you into action, act first in order to spark your mood into a motivated, all-systems-go mode. In other words, start operating under the notion that the right action inspires the right mood, instead of the other way around.
- No matter what mood you’re in—happy or cranky, excited or bored, calm or edgy—just start.
- Practice the three psychological tricks described below to experience a mood boost whenever you need one.
- Set a low threshold for getting started.
- Time travel here pertains to the practice of projecting yourself into the future as a way to anticipate how good you’d feel if you finish a task, and how bad you’d feel if you don’t. Vividly think about your future self and how they will feel. This strategy remedies the tendency to get so caught up in your present anxieties—or present pleasures—such that you fail to appreciate the relief and sense of fulfillment that comes once you accomplish a task, and the horror that comes if you don’t.
- Forgive yourself for procrastinating. One way that you get overpowered by procrastination is by letting yourself think that your past procrastination slip-ups are irredeemable, and that they have done such irreparable damage that you might as well give up on trying to remedy the situation altogether. You feel guilty and blame yourself for being too weak to fight off procrastination, so you get discouraged trying to do the task any longer.
Deal with omission bias
- Omission bias is a cognitive distortion by which we fail to see the consequences of not doing something. While it’s easy for us to envision the consequences of committing something bad, it’s harder for us to imagine the costs of omission. When there’s no tangible action, our minds find no reason to try to see how that might change things for us.
- Once you’re better aware of the gravity of consequences attached to not doing a task, you’ll also be more motivated to start doing that task. Proactively magnifying the negative effects of omission bias on your life is a powerful way to confront it, and a key strategy to transition from procrastination to productivity.
Visualize your future self
- Procrastination isn’t just about complacency or mere forgetfulness. It’s more about hazarding the welfare of our future selves as we focus on gaining short-term pleasure at the cost of long-term benefits. The better we’re able to visualize and interact with our future self, the better we get at taking good care of it.
- When you’re feeling drawn to procrastinate, think of your future self. Create a vivid image in your mind depicting your future self in a failure scenario, and try to feel what they feel in that event. Then picture your future self in a success scenario, and also try to feel all the positive emotions you’d feel in that moment. Visualize every little step and reaction your future self would make in both situations. Getting a taste of the two alternate lives your future self might experience will increase your motivation to act toward realizing your success vision rather than the failure depiction. Make it stick and make it impactful.
Strategic Planning
When it comes to beating procrastination, half the battle is getting a good strategy in place. If you plan your tasks well and set up your workload strategically, you can strip away the chances of slipping into procrastination. No more delaying the start of a project, straying off task, or getting tempted into engaging in mindless, unimportant activities—rather, you can structure things to set yourself up for productivity, efficiency, and achievement.
Use the STING method
It stands for Select one task, Time yourself, Ignore everything else, No breaks, and Give yourself a reward.
- Select a single, small task on which you should focus at a particular time. With a clear course of action laid out in front of you, you’ll be less likely to try to escape an overwhelming or confusing situation by procrastination.
- Timing yourself means setting a predetermined amount of time you’ll be spending on a particular task. Give yourself, say, one hour to work on that business proposal, and promise to stop once the hour is up regardless of whether you’ve finished the task.
- You need to focus solely on the task you’ve selected and put your blinders on, ignoring everything else unrelated to the task at hand whether it’s thoughts about the next thing on your to-do list, or environmental distractors as your mobile phone, your email alerts, and your chatty colleague. Ignoring these shields you from the extraneous stuff that detracts you from your purpose and thus prevents you from procrastinating.
- No breaks. Within the time frame you’ve set for focusing on a task, make sure you refrain from taking breaks.
- Give yourself a reward. Once you’re done with a task, reward yourself. Indulge in a favorite snack, treat yourself to a movie, or snuggle down to a good nap.
Focus on the Process, Not the Product
- As you set your sights and focus only on the loftiest goal, its height can overwhelm you, and you begin to doubt your capacity to reach it. Try to focus on the process rather than the product. While product pertains to the outcome of your efforts, process refers to the actions you take and the flow of time that passes as you work toward that outcome.
- What do you need to do in order to get the job done? Break things down into smaller tasks, then schedule these tasks to be done within chunks of time spread out over days or weeks. These smaller tasks are easier to swallow mentally, and the bite-sized portions relieve you of pressure by allowing you to focus just on one particular work block at a time, rather than allowing you to get intimidated by the idea of an overarching goal.
Manipulate the “Procrastination Equation”
- The more you expect to succeed and the more you value a task, the more you’re motivated to work on it, and therefore, the less likely you’re going to procrastinate. On the other hand, the more impulsive you are and the more delayed the payoff for the task is, the less you’re motivated to work, and therefore, the more likely it is that you’re going to procrastinate.
Pit Hated Tasks Against Each Other
- Construct a to-do list, but make it your mission to include only tasks that you consider hateful, daunting, or even downright impossible. At the very top of the list, put in tasks that sound important, but really aren’t, and appear to have deadlines, but really don’t. … Since everything on your to-do list appears unpleasant and hateful to you anyway, you’re bound to work on the tasks you hate the least just to avoid having to do the tasks you hate the most.
Temptation Bundling
- Temptation bundling is a way to blend both future and present self needs by making future rewards more immediate. You give yourself instant gratification in the present while also achieving goals that benefit your future self in the long-term.
- You should make a list with two columns, one side being your guilty pleasures or temptations and the other side being things you need to do for your future self. Then figure out creative ways to link the two conflicting columns in harmony.
Structuring Against Procrastination
Aim for no more “Zero Days”
A zero day is a day which you’ve let slip by without doing anything to achieve your goal.
- Think of life as a binary: Either you’re doing something (“1”), or you’re not (“0”). Aim for a string of 1s instead of 0s. Make it black and white with no in-between. In other words, see to it that every day, you do something that’ll inch you closer to your goal.
- Instead of seeing each day as either a 10 (task competed) or a 0 (no work done), replace the idea of needing a 10 to needing just a 1 (got something done). It doesn’t matter how small a portion of a task you managed to do for the day; it only matters that you at least got something done. Give yourself a 1 for the day.
- Strive to rid your calendar of any 0 in there, but if you do slip up and get a 0 one day, don’t feel discouraged. Recover the next day with another 1.
Employe Self-Interrogation Techniques
There are at least four questions you can keep at the ready to help you overcome procrastination the next time it tugs at you.
- “What one thing can I do to get started?”
- “What are my three biggest priorities today?”
- “How can I make this easier?”
- “What will go wrong if I don’t do this now?”
Use the “Ivy Lee method”
It’s easier and more tempting to procrastinate when you’re confused about which tasks to do first anyway. By affording you direction and clarity, the Ivy Lee method saves you from mindlessly falling into enjoyable, yet ultimately unimportant tasks.
- List the six most important things you should do the next day. It is important that you do not exceed listing six tasks.
- Rank those six items by order of importance. Consider how urgent and essential each task is and prioritize accordingly.
- When you set out to start the following day, work only on the first thing on your list and don’t stop until it’s done. You’re not allowed to move on to the second task until after you’ve finished the first.
- Proceed with the rest of your list in like manner. Move any unfinished tasks to the new list of six tasks you set for the next day.
- Repeat this procedure every day.
Write down a schedule
Scheduling involves identifying a number of elements.
- Identify the tasks that you need to do.
- Decide when you’re going to do each task. Assign a specific time frame (e.g., “from 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM”) instead of using vague terms (e.g., “sometime in the morning”).
- Identify the tools and resources you’ll need for the task so that you can prepare them beforehand.
- Name the physical location where you’ll carry out each task. This way, you’ll know exactly where to head to when the scheduled time arrives.
- Draft a backup plan in case the task doesn’t get done in the scheduled slot. Write down all of these details on a piece of paper, then post it someplace you can always see it as a reminder of how your day is supposed to.
Take Action
“The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action.” —Alexander Graham Bell
10-10-10 method
The next time you feel you’re about to give in to a temptation, stop and ask yourself how you will feel 10 minutes, 10 hours, and 10 days from now. It’s effective because it forces you to think specifically about your future self and to see how your actions are going to affect yourself in the future—for better or worse.
- A lot of times, we may know that we are losing willpower or doing something harmful in the moment, but that’s not enough to stop us from doing it because we don’t have any connection to our future self that will have to deal with the consequences. This rule quickly creates that connection, and that can make the difference between a success or failure of discipline.
- If you want to quit something beneficial, wait just 10 more minutes. It’s the same thought process applied in a different way. 10 minutes is nothing, so you easily can wait or continue for that amount of time.
- Another benefit of this rule is the purposeful escalation of good habits. If you’ve forced yourself to do something productive for 10 minutes, you might end up doing it for 15 or even 20 minutes more
The 40-70 Rule
Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has a rule of thumb about coming to a point of action. He says that any time you face a hard choice, you should have no less than 40% and no more than 70% of the information you need to make that decision. In that range, you have enough information to make an informed choice, but not so much intelligence that you lose your resolve and simply stay abreast of the situation.
Tiny steps
- Break up your big tasks into smaller tasks, and keep repeating until the tasks you have before you are so easy you can do them within a few minutes. Create small, manageable chunks that will be psychologically uplifting and acceptable, and you’ll kick your production up instantly.
- Make your to-do list as long and articulated as possible, with as many small tasks as you can list. A pebble is something you can do instantly, without any effort, and even with little thought.
- Productivity is nothing without action, and action is much easier with something simple and easy to warm up with. Small steps can take you to the top of the hill and let you roll down the other side to seize momentum. They help you break the inertia that leads you to passivity and inaction.
Banish excuses
Excuses are our subconscious protecting us from our fears. Now is not the right time… I can’t do X until… I can’t do X unless… True. There is never a perfect time for anything. There are mediocre times and terrible times, but rarely are there perfect times. Stop putting conditions around your ability to work.
- Many of us wish timing was something we had more control over, but the fact remains that we rarely get to choose when something happens to us. We do, however, get to choose when we take action. If you find yourself questioning this, the time to act has already arrived.
- I don’t know where to start. You do; the problem is you think you need an entire plan before starting. People need to stop expecting to see a clear path through to the end before they even begin. Here is the secret: You don’t need to know where you will finish to know where to start. Doing something today with what you have today is the key.
- A beginning is the goal. After you start, the rest will take care of itself because you will know what needs to be done to get you to the next step, and then the one after that.
- I’m not good enough. Shockingly, that just might be true. A person may really want to do something, but they might not be good enough. What is the answer to that dilemma? You can become good enough. Sometimes the only way to get what you want is to shift into a growth mindset and start working. Make sure that this time next year, you know more than you know now and that your skills are better than they are now. If you are willing to take the first steps, what you need will follow. Just because you are not good enough now does not mean you cannot become good enough eventually.
More than any of these techniques, the self-awareness that you are not doing what needs to be done is the key to getting started. Then you can employ any of these techniques to overcome procrastination and be productive.