How to avoid procrastination: building self-awareness & specific steps to avoid procrastination.
You really can do something about procrastination.
If you think you “work best under pressure,” or if you think that “getting it done in the last minute” are good strategies, we beg you to think again. By definition, procrastination is any delay that causes harm. Last-minute work almost always could have been better with planning and earlier start.
These strategies will help:
1. Don’t reward yourself for doing nothing
Putting off something you don’t want in order to avoid stress is called “giving in to feel good.”
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- Work and responsibilities are stressful, and we naturally want to avoid stress.
- “Giving in to feel good” means:
- To “give in” means giving up, not doing what you need to do.
- To “feel good” means to feel better because you are putting off something.
- Experts call this “mood repair,” a coping mechanism for avoiding anxiety.
- It works like this:
- Having to do something you don’t want to do creates anxiety.
- Delay and avoidance relieves that anxiety
- And by telling yourself you will get to it later you relieve guilt (rationalization).
- If you put something off, you will feel more relaxed because you have resolved your anxiety by choosing a more pleasing behavior, such as eating or sleeping.
- Delay and “giving in to feel good” is avoidance:
- It trains your emotional state to seek escaping.
- When you “give in to feel good” you are creating a psychological reward for doing nothing.
- It becomes self-perpetuating, and you will never be “in the mood” to do your work, and you will rely on crisis instead.
- Delay and “giving in to feel good” is a habit:
- Every time you “give in to feel good” you are reinforcing a habit
- It becomes a conditioned response to anxiety.
- Worse, it produces negative outcomes, especially with grades.
2. Recognize that your mood does not need to match your work
Work is work; moods are moods. They are unrelated.
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- To do your work, you don’t have “to feel like it.”
- Don’t confuse your mood with your ability to do something:
- In the same way you can still play even if you are hungry, or you can still watch TV if you are sleepy, you can still do work even if you “don’t feel like it.”
- If we matched our moods to every choice, we’d only ever do one thing. Life is more complicated than that.
- You can still do work whether you’re happy, angry, or anxious.
- “Not feeling like it” is still a zero on your grade.
- Putting it off won’t change your mood tomorrow. You’re just as likely to “not feel like it” tomorrow as you do today.
- Get going, on it, even if you “don’t feel like it.
- Accomplishment will repair your mood more positively:
- Your mood will improve once you get your work done:
- Harness the emotional copying mechanism of “mood repair” to seek feeling better through accomplishment and not avoidance.
- Doing it actually makes you feel better and changes your mood to a more positive frame of mind.
- The more you do, the more you are able to get past the “don’t feel like it” moods and you can break the habit of delay.
3. Use “Time travel”
Future-Self calling on Present-Self: “please get going on this thing now, because it’s a week later and now I’ve got too much to do!”
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- Imagine yourself in the future, and see the consequences of your choices.
- Ask your Present-Self what Future-Self expects of you.
- Imagine how good you will feel later if you had already done it;
- Or imagine how bad or panicked you will feel if you don’t.
- Projecting into the future helps us make more positive immediate decisions, especially to overcome impulse.
4. “Pre-decide” to do your work:
Don’t let impulse make your decisions, decide to do it in advance
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- Impulsivity is deeply related to procrastination.
- Avoid impulsive decisions by making those decisions in advance.
- Pre-decision = “if [this] happens, then I will…”
- For example, tell yourself before you start working:
- “If my friend calls me, I’m going to tell them I can’t talk now because I have to do my work.”
- “When I come home, I will do my work before relaxing by the TV.
- This is called “goal intention” and “implementation intention”
- Goal Intention = setting goals in advance
- Implementation intention = acting on those goals.
- With pre-decision, having decided in advance makes the more desirable decision to get work done easier and more likely to result than in relying on impulse to answer every situation.
5. Just get it started!
Don’t scare yourself with “Just do it” – instead, “Just start it.”
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- When you face a large task, your anxiety increases when you consider all you have to do.
- Instead, just commit to getting started.
- Call it “little bites” or “small steps”
- No matter how big or scary the project, there’s always something you can do, so focus on that instead of the whole thing.
- See the trees not the forest:
- The larger the project or task the more abstract (not real) it seems.
- Smaller pieces are more concrete, you can “see” them better.
- Just get started, and you’ll find that it is manageable.
- Commit to five minutes and see how that goes.
- Getting started helps overcome both anxiety and the impulse to avoid it by “giving in to feel good.”
- Notice how this article is easier to read when the content is hidden and you only see the headers? That’s because it just seems shorter, although you know it’s not.
- Same thing goes for your work:
- It may be long and hard, but it is manageable.
- It is more comfortable to get started if only facing one part of it at a time.
6. Ask for help
Reaching out for help is getting started.
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- By asking for help, you are forcing yourself to think it over.
- Asking a question helps to define and clarify.
- Talk to a friend, email your teacher.
- By asking for help, you are also creating an external commitment, which is easier to uphold than an internal one (you are now obligated to someone else to do the work and it’s not just for yourself anymore).
- Just asking for help is an important first step.
7. Work in chunks & recharge your willpower
You will be less able to do everything later than you are today, so apply your power of will and get started in chunks.
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- To “just get started” find a part of your work that will only take 10-15 minutes and focus on that.
- Structure your breaks:
- Plan breaks and pre-decide to get back to work after each.
- Instead of trying to get it all done at once, work in shorter sessions over longer times.
- This will make your work seem more manageable and will reduce your fear of such a larger obstacle.
- When you start losing your willpower to keep going try a glass of juice or some fruit:
- Glucose rebuilds willpower. Best sources of glucose (natural sugar) are fruit and juice. Be careful of things that are too sugary and just give you a sugar buzz that goes away quickly.
- Laughter rebuilds willpower, too (scientifically proven!).
8. Avoid and control distractions
(“I’ll just…” oops, later is here again)
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- Distractions only exist when you let them.
- For procrastinators, there is no “just”: just checking email or turning on the TV becomes not just a distraction, but delay and avoidance.
- Decide in advance how to deal with the distractions you know are coming.
- “Pre-decide” not to let distractions get in your way.
- Distractions are avoidance.
- Remind yourself that if you let distractions get in your way, you are rewarding yourself for doing nothing. So keep to “don’t give in to feel good,” and instead, get your work done.
- Multitasking is really just letting distractions get in the way.
9. Trade your work for something, not for nothing
Instead of doing nothing, put off one thing in exchange for doing another.
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- Tell yourself: okay, I’m not going to do this, but I will do that.
- This is called “Structured Procrastination.”
- This way you’re being productive, which, as we know from above, brings a sense of accomplishment and gets you past the “I don’t feel like it” mood.
- If you keep doing this, your sense of accomplishment will improve, and you will more easily get to all those things you need to do.
- Some people like to get to the stuff you don’t want to do first, so it gets out of the way.
- That can be hard on procrastinators, because just getting to work is hard, and getting to the hard, tedious stuff is worse.
- If you do decide to do the simpler, clearer tasks first:
- Just get started on it, one step at a time
- Keep in mind that you will still have to do other things.
- Use your breaks and willpower strategies to keep going.
10. Don’t beat yourself up over it!
The more you worry about poor choices in the past, the more stressed you will become.
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- And the more stressed you are the more you will want to avoid it by doing nothing (“giving in to feel good”).
- Forgive yourself:
- Research shows that students who forgive themselves for past procrastination do it less in the future.
- It’s all about reducing your stress and being positive about what you need to do.
- Just as you would forgive a friend in order to preserve a friendship, forgiving yourself helps save the relationship with your own positive decisions.
Bonus tips:
Recognize your personality type
Everyone is different, and we all struggle with something.
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- Certain personalities are good at organizing and getting things done, others are prone to procrastination
- Are you “deliberate,” “careful,” “organized”? Then you probably don’t have procrastination issues
- Are you “spontaneous” or “impulsive”? These are typical traits of procrastinators
- Do other people expect you to be perfect? Then you probably experience anxiety when faced with large assignments, and you may find yourself procrastinating in order to avoid the anxiety of having to meet someone else’s expectations.
Set specific and not general (abstract) goals
Focus on little things, not the big picture
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- Procrastinators often set general, January 1st – type goals, such as “lose weight” or “get better grades.”
- these are abstract goals that are noble and good but are disconnected from day-to-day choices
- abstract goals tend to be largely unattainable, which only sets ourselves up for failure.
- Set specific, concrete and actionable goals:
- instead of “getting better grades” set a goal that targets specific activities that will lead to better grades, such as:
- “review my notes for 30 minutes everyday before dinner”
- “ask my teachers one question a day”
- Concrete goals are measurable, tangible and attainable.
These tips are derived from our experience working with students and from the amazing advice of Dr. Timothy A. Pychyl and his blog, “Don’t Delay” on PsychologyToday.com and his Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University. See also this article in the Wall Street Journal for more on these ideas: To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair.
For more on these ideas please see our posts here, including:
– Michael
