Get a Handle on Procrastination

There will never be enough hours in the day, days in the week, or, even, years in our lives to get all the things we would like to get done, done.

Accepting this fact is the first big step in getting a handle on procrastination, and the implications of it are huge! For one thing, you have to decide which things are not really worth your time, then you have to stop wasting your time doing them or even thinking about doing them.

We spend far too much time worrying about what to do and imagining all the terrible things that might happen to us if we don’t do them instead of actually doing anything productive. That’s one of the many problems of procrastinators. I know. I used to be paralyzed with procrastination, starting as early as junior high school, when I first began to be aware of the importance of certain school assignments, and lasting all the way to my first year of law school, when procrastination meant certain death to my future legal career. Through all those years of struggling with it, I learned a few things and finally stopped procrastinating. Now, I want to share how I stopped with you.

HOW I BECAME A PROCRASTINATOR

I don’t remember procrastinating much in elementary school. I never had any assigned homework in any of the three elementary schools I attended (our family moved around a lot). We only had to take work home if we couldn’t finish it during class. I always managed to finish mine early. I never stressed the tests either because I seemed to do pretty well without studying much—except for math, as I already mentioned in a few previous articles. But, since my dad had convinced me that I was doomed in that subject, anyway, I stopped worrying about it.

Then came junior high school. I went to two of them, and both required lots of homework and the tests suddenly became much harder. To make matters worse, my teachers, counselors, and parents began telling me that my grades from now on were going to follow me for the rest of my life, determining ultimately whether I would succeed or fail in life. I didn’t exactly know how my junior high school grades could do all that, but I was afraid. I was very afraid. Especially since I believed that good grades were not the result of studying but the result of natural born talents—or the lack thereof. And, it would be decades yet before I could finally dispel this self-defeating harmful belief. See “Change Your Mindset to Change Your Life.”

High school was even worse. I went to two of those. At my first high school, my grades were better than most of my classmates, which was nothing to brag about because sports, cheerleading, and gangbanging were the cool things to do there. I hadn’t made up my mind yet what to do after high school. But, by my Junior year, I had some vague notions of joining the Army or going to either Rio Hondo Community College or UCLA. Then, my family suddenly moved again, and I ended up at a high school with an entirely different caliber of students. The Juniors there had already planned—not only their first, second, third, and fourth picks of 4-year universities around the country that they wanted to attend, but, also—their major fields of study, their post-graduate schools of choice, and their professional careers.

Almost overnight, I learned that I had nearly missed the boat. Maybe I already had! I didn’t know for sure. There was so much to learn about the process of applying for colleges, including classes I still had to take to qualify for the 4-year universities, especially UCLA, and tests called AP (”advanced placement”) tests I’d never even heard of before. I had to bring up my GPA (”grade point average”) in what little time I had left of high school. It all seemed so overwhelming. Meanwhile, the classes themselves were much harder than the one’s I’d been attending in my old high school. I was drowning, barely keeping my head above water.

The only thing that kept me from going down for good was a very bad habit I grew since junior high school: procrastination combined with feverish hard work at the very last minute. It was a terrible habit because this method for “success” can only take you so far. At some point, it’s just not good enough even to get you by, and, suddenly, you’re left with nothing but bad study/work habits. Then, you have to—at a relatively late age—teach yourself good study/work habits or accept failure.

HOW I STOPPED PROSCRATINATING

There should be a 12-Step Program for procrastinators because it’s like an addiction with all the complicated emotional underpinnings associated with more traditional addictions like alcoholism or drugs. I don’t know of any studies about this, but I’d bet that when we experience the extreme stress, anxiety, fear, anger, frustration, or depression coming on every time we try to tackle a huge project, our brain actually releases pleasure chemicals the moment we decide to do something else—anything else—but the dreaded project. However, just like drugs and alcohol, chasing the short-lived high of procrastination always makes our original problem about ten times worse and leaves us with constant, nagging guilt and shame.

1. Stop Believing the Myths and Learn the Truth

I was shocked to find the definition for “procrastination” in the American Heritage Dictionary listed as “to put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness.” These are two major myths about procrastination—that procrastinators are either too lazy or don’t care about a project to get it done on time. Other myths are that we have no will power or that we’re too forgetful.

The truth is we care too much about the project, put way more time than most other people into thinking/worrying about it, and, thus, can’t forget it long enough to know a single day of peace while it’s hanging over our heads like a grand piano on a fraying rope. Do we lack will power or self-control? Not really because we are controlling our own actions when we decide to run for cover from the terrible negative feelings and thoughts that start to bombard us whenever we try to tackle the project. Non-procrastinators with normal self-preservation instincts would do the same if they suffered from such terrible panic attacks, too. Viewed this way, we have tremendous will power to eventually get the task done, however late.

2. Accept that Your Change Will Take Effort and Time

It took many years to grow my deeply rooted unhealthy habits of procrastination. So, naturally, it took me at least a few years to undo those habits by replacing them with new healthier ones. But, first, I had to stop beating myself up about not being able to suddenly stop procrastinating overnight just because I decided to.

3. Understand Why You Procrastinate

As I mentioned, the emotional underpinnings of procrastination are complex. Understanding why you procrastinate may not make you stop doing it, but it will help you know yourself better, which is always a key to personal growth.

a. Perfectionism. Being hypercritical of ourselves is a truly self-defeating habit. It not only makes us judge ourselves too harshly, this toxic tendency necessarily poisons all of our relationships because whatever mistakes or imperfections we can’t allow ourselves to make or have, we can’t tolerate these in others, either. But, it’s crazy to believe that anyone could ever be perfect. Perfection only exists in pure fiction—fun to read and watch on TV or at the movies but not to be taken seriously as realistic goals for living, breathing human beings, like you and me.

Having high, but, realistic, standards that take into consideration the different circumstances of every situation is not perfectionism. Perfectionism is rigid and unrelenting. The perfectionist’s motto is, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” But, high realistic standards are flexible and ever-changing. The motto of people with high realistic standards is, “Progress, not perfection.” Why? Because striving for perfection means setting yourself up for failure. And, who wants to face failure? If you know you’re going to fail, you won’t even try. And, hence, a lot of perfectionists don’t try. They merely do the bare minimum at the very last minute because they don’t want to get kicked out of school or fired from the job. But, they can’t bear to really put in an honest day’s effort only to fail anyway—as they must since they equate anything less than perfection as failure. It’s a vicious cycle.

b. Magical or Wishful Thinking. As if striving for the impossible state of perfection wasn’t bad enough, our ideas of how to reach our goals are filled with magical or wishful thinking. When we run into problems in our lives, we create implausible scenarios for a fairy tale ending that will solve everything, then convince ourselves that the plan is both doable and sound—despite strong evidence to the contrary:

“If I keep pursuing her, she’ll eventually go out with me and fall in love with me!”

“My firm lost a bunch of clients, and there’s rumors of layoffs. A few coworkers are interviewing elsewhere. But, I’m not going to till I get the official word because, even though I was one of the last ones hired, they still might keep me since I’m cheaper and harder working than most of the senior employees here.”

The formula is always: “If I can just do/get/have/be ‘X,’ everything will be fine.” So, we spend endless hours planning how to do/get/have/be “X.” But, this formula is flawed. No one thing can ever make us happy forever. No wonder we are always disappointed, even if we do/get/have/be “X.” But, we almost never do/get/have/be “X” since the pressure is too great to do/get/have/be “X” because the stakes are so high. Therefore, magical or wishful thinking is a lose-lose situation.

c. All-or-Nothing Thinking. Since perfectionism and magical thinking convinced us that our future happiness depends on the outcome of this project (and we think this about every project), no wonder all our ideas for it are never good enough!

d. Paralyzing Fear of Failure. Sometimes we get so sick of scrapping all our false starts and ideas as not good enough that we just sit there and wait for the perfect genius inspiration to hit us between the eyes. But, of course, it never comes.

e. Mental or Emotional Disorders. Procrastination can be a side effect or by product of a much more serious mental or emotional problem, such as attention deficit disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, clinical depression, or some other disorder and may need the professional help of doctors and/or psychologists.

4. Learn a System for Getting Your Projects Done

The system that finally worked for me to get any big projects done timely was this:

a. Make sure I understand everything I can about the project as soon as I get it. In school, this step was straightforward. It was only in the working world that this simple step became a real challenge. If you didn’t ask, you usually didn’t get all the information you needed to get the job done. So, no matter how busy I was, whenever I was given a new big project, I dropped everything I was doing to gather all the facts and suggestions for how to proceed from the person who assigned it to me. Nobody else’s opinion about how to do it mattered, including mine. If I needed clarification, I went back to the same person immediately. This simple, single, crucial step cut down my usual time on projects by at least half!

Next, I immediately typed up my understanding of the project and my part in it in an email to the person who assigned it to me, and I asked for any corrections in case there were any misunderstandings. If anyone else was assigned to the project with me, or was otherwise requested to be notified of the progress on the project, I copied them on the email. Basically, I opened up the lines of communication to everyone involved in the project and let them know what my role in it was, what was expected of me, and by what date and what time, if applicable.

b. I budget my time for the project. To do this, you have to be able to accurately estimate how many hours it will take to complete it, and then make sure you set aside enough time for it. Here is where most procrastinators go wrong. They skip this step. If you don’t know that completing a term paper can take 50 hours (20 hours for research; 10 hours for the first draft; 2 hours of meetings with your professor; 8 hours for the second draft; and 10 hours for the final draft), then you’ll can’t save the time for it. But, how do you accurately estimate how long it will take you to complete any big assignments when you have been a habitual procrastinator like I was, always waiting till the last minute to do everything? The answer is you can’t. You have to use your best judgment—and then multiply it by three to be on the safe side till you get a better idea of how long you take to get things done.

c. I strive to get a “C” on the project instead of an “A.” This trick lets me finish at least a first draft, hopefully with enough time left to revise it two or three times to turn it into an “A” product. However, in a pinch, I can still turn it in as a final draft. In the working world, it’s far better to get the project done timely in a so-so condition than to miss the deadline but have a beautiful but useless end product.

Also, see “7 Quick Tips for More Time and Less Stress” and “20 Tips for Highly Effective Time Management.” Even though these tips may seem overly simple, they are nevertheless quite effective. They work if you put them to work for you. I also recommend Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time (2001) by Brian Tracy. For my summary of that great book, click here. It doesn’t matter which system you adopt, as long as you get started immediately. Habits are tough to break and it takes time. So, best to begin now.

5. Practice, Practice, Practice: Progress, Not Perfection!

None of this will make any difference in your life unless you take action and keep taking action. Only then will your newly developing habits be strong enough to take over your old habits. And, please be careful not to be too hard on yourself if you backslide once in a while, either. Punishing yourself is counter-productive. It’s all about progress, not perfection. Two steps forward, one step back, is progress.

CONCLUSION

Imagine you’ve done all your big projects early, you have plenty of time to get the rest done without rushing, and you enjoy all your free time 100% guilt-free! I can tell you that feeling is totally addictive. You’ll crave as much as you can get as soon as you’ve had a taste of it. And, that’s how these great habits grow!

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[For “7 Quick Tips for More Time and Less Stress,” click here.]

[For “20 Tips for Highly Effective Time Management,” click here.]

[For “Eat that Frog!,” click here.]

[For “How to Wake Up Early, Refreshed, and Excited!,” click here.]

[For “Success in the Corporate World,” click here.]

[For “Bullet-Proof Interview Suit,” click here.]

[For “How to Ace Job Interviews,” click here.]

[For “How to Fill Out Job Applications,” click here.]

[For “What Jobs Are There?,” click here.]

[For “Are You Your Job?,” click here.]

[For “25 Inspiring Work Quotes,” click here.]

[For all posts about different QUOTES, click here.]

[For “Funny Resumes and Work Evaluations,” click here.]

[For “100 Best Lawyer Jokes,” click here.]

[For “How to Think Like a Lawyer,” click here.]

[For “70 Movies about How to Succeed in Life,” click here.]

[For more “Easy Steps to Success with Work,” click here.]