Note: This is a rather long article. You might want some popcorn. Also, all names have been changed for privacy reasons.
On the surface, Janet* was living the dream: she had a high-powered finance job with a large salary and a slew of corporate perks.
But Janet had a secret: she was terrified at her job. Not just because of the long hours, or the admittedly high-stress environment.
No, Janet was terrified because she was hiding the truth: she was a terrible procrastinator. This wasn’t your everyday, push-off-a-big-assignment-for-a-few-hours type of procrastination. We’re talking delay-projects-for-weeks-and-then-stay-up-for-48-hours-straight-to-finish-them sort of procrastination.
Like many procrastinators, Janet had kept her procrastination hidden from the people around her. And the procrastination wasn’t just work-related: it came into every aspect of her life, from paying bills to cooking dinner.
As a result, Janet lived in a constant state of anxiety about not turning in her projects on time or turning in subpar projects that would get her fired. This anxiety was heightened when one of her performance reviews recommended that she pay closer attention to detail: a suggestion that carries serious ramifications in a finance role like hers.
When Janet came to me, she wasn’t sure her procrastination could be fixed. She’d been a procrastinator as long as she could remember, and no matter what she’d tried, she hadn’t been able to improve. Part of her believed that her chronic anxiety meant she’d never be able to change. She’d only reached out to me on the recommendation of a friend.
After talking, Janet and I decided to start working together. We both knew that changing her habits around procrastination wouldn’t be easy. But I was confident that we could make some progress.
Making a Plan:
In my experience, dealing with procrastination is a three-step process. And because I’m a nerd who loves acronyms, I like to simplify this process into the three M’s:
1. Mindfulness
2. Motivation
3. Management
Let’s break those down.
Mindfulness: Before we can treat our procrastination, we need to understand it fully. That means understanding what types of tasks trigger our urge to procrastinate. What are we feeling when we decide to put something off (Nervous? Overwhelmed? In desperate need of ice cream?) What thoughts go through our head (I’ll do it later, I don’t know where to start, this isn’t that important, etc.). The answers to these questions can sometimes be surprising, as they were for Janet (more on that later).
It’s also important to understand what we feel after procrastinating. Sometimes, after people procrastinate, they feel ashamed or guilty. This shame and guilt can trap us in a spiral that makes us more likely to procrastinate in the future.
On the other hand, some people feel relief immediately after procrastinating. Deciding not to work on something gives them a temporary sense of relief from anxiety. This relief can create an unconscious but powerful feedback loop where procrastination = relief.
Understanding how we’re feeling before, during, and after we procrastinate makes it possible to come up with an effective plan moving forward.
Motivation: Motivation is about finding the reasons why we want to end our habit of procrastination. Procrastination–like any habit–is usually hard to break. Without a clear focus on our goals, it will be hard to find the motivation we need to break the habit, especially when the process gets hard.
Finding the right motivations is often harder than we expect. For example, an individual might start by listing their motivation as getting a better review at work. But more exploration might reveal that a stronger motivation is avoiding the feeling of anxiety that comes with procrastinating. Or it might be setting a good example for a child.
Finding the strongest motivation will give our process the highest chance of success.
I almost always recommend that people write down their motivations, sometimes in more than one place.
Management: Once we understand why we procrastinate and what our motivations are, we can start developing strategies and tools to manage our procrastination. We usually divide these strategies into three groups:
-Strategies that help us start projects without procrastinating
-Strategies that help us finish projects (starting and finishing the projects are different skills!)
-Strategies that help us deal with the emotions around procrastination (like the anxiety that dealing with procrastination can bring up)
What Janet and I Did:
Once I outlined the broad strokes of our approach, Janet and I went about making a specific plan for her.
First up was mindfulness: in Janet’s case, we decided she would keep a diary where she noted every time she procrastinated throughout the week and what emotions she was feeling when she procrastinated.
This was not a small ask. And of course, there are certain situations where we can’t immediately write down what we’re thinking or feeling. But our goal was for Janet to write down as much as possible. This usually resulted in her keeping track of different moments in her phone and then trying her best to note down what emotions she was feeling when she procrastinated.
Like many people, Janet found that the projects she was most likely to procrastinate were:
-Projects that felt too easy
-Projects that seemed really important (regardless of whether they were easy or hard)
-Projects associated with finance (whether personal or at work)
It’s worth noting that this isn’t true of every procrastinator. Some procrastinators will put off hard projects but have no problem tackling easy ones. Others have trouble with low-urgency tasks but no problem with the difficult ones.
For Janet, the projects that felt most important were always the ones that were most likely to cause procrastination behavior. When Janet kept track of her feelings, she noticed a few things:
She’d thought that she was avoiding easy projects just because they made her feel bored. But her mindfulness activities revealed that these easy projects were actually triggering some pretty serious anxiety. Doing boring tasks gave Janet a feeling that she was “wasting her life,” which, in turn, triggered some pretty serious angst.
Projects that seemed really important were also triggering anxiety. She was worried that they wouldn’t be good enough and that a mistake would be catastrophic. She would tell herself that she would start at the “perfect moment,” which then never came.
Projects associated with finance were making her feel inadequate. Even tasks she knew how to do–like paying her bills–triggered an unsettling feeling that she should be doing more with her money.
While the specifics of Janet’s situation were unique, the big picture around her procrastination was fairly common. Almost always, procrastination is a reaction to unpleasant feelings like anxiety and boredom. Procrastinating allows us to (temporarily) avoid the negative emotions associated with doing certain tasks. For Janet, procrastinating allowed her to avoid feelings of anxiety and dread.
Once Janet was aware of why she was avoiding certain tasks, she actually found it easier to stop procrastinating. Just being aware of why we procrastinate often results in huge improvements. That said, Janet and I weren’t done yet.
Motivation:
Overcoming habits is hard work. And without clear motivation, it’s easy to give up on that work prematurely. Janet had tried to improve her procrastination before, but she’d almost always ended up abandoning her plans.
Often, one of the reasons we have trouble sticking to a plan is that we haven’t ironed out our motivations. People might have a general idea that they “should” procrastinate less. But that type of vague, unfocused motivation often doesn’t hold up under pressure. So Janet and I worked on ironing out some of her more specific motivations:
-To avoid the anxiety that procrastination caused
-To feel more competent at her job (and avoid the anxiety around performance reviews)
-To have more time to actually relax (as opposed to always worrying about something she hadn’t done).
Once we had a solid understanding of what was causing Janet’s procrastination and what her motivations were, we were ready to start trying some strategies to manage her pain.
Managing
There are dozens of strategies for helping manage procrastination, many of which have fun names like “eating the frog” (ie doing the hardest task first) or “Pomodoro Method” (working in 20 minute blocks with five minute breaks). While many of these strategies can be helpful, there’s not one strategy that works for everyone. Moreover, when anxiety is at the root of procrastination, we need strategies that address the anxiety as well as strategies that help us focus.
In order to address the anxiety, we started Janet off with what I call “sitting with discomfort” exercises. What are these?
Remember that the reason most of us procrastinate is to avoid some form of discomfort: anxiety, boredom, dread etc. When we procrastinate, we temporarily eliminate that discomfort. Eliminating that discomfort makes us feel a little better in the moment (even if it causes more anxiety/guilt later on). This relief creates a positive feedback loop, which builds a subconscious habit of procrastination.
To break the cycle, we have to get used to dealing with that discomfort rather than avoiding it. We use “sitting” exercises to get used to dealing with discomfort in a low-pressure way.
For Janet, these exercises mostly involved scheduling a time to simply sit with a task that made her uncomfortable. She didn’t necessarily have to start the task. She might spend a few minutes just staring at a blank page or looking at the finances for one of her projects. Instead of flipping to a different tab or doing something else, Janet’s task was just to get used to sitting with the discomfort the task caused. Learning that it’s ok to feel that discomfort–and that she is capable of working through it–was a critical first step to helping Janet conquer her habit of procrastination.
In addition to those sitting activities, we implemented some exercises to help Janet actually break the procrastination habit. For Janet, the most effective exercises ended up being:
-Scheduling work blocks to tackle hard issues: Janet would schedule half-hour chunks where she was scheduled to work on specific tasks. Part of the scheduling task was that Janet had to schedule something fun or positive to do after the hard work. By moving from the hard work block into something positive, we set up positive reinforcement for doing the task. (In this case, something positive could be as small as listening to a good song or as large as going out to lunch with a friend).
-Using a “momentum” task system. Some people benefit from tackling their hardest tasks first. But for Janet, it was too intimidating to start with the hardest task first. So we used a momentum system: we had Janet start each day with a few tasks that were easy for her to complete, and then worked up to the tasks most likely to trigger her procrastination.
Conclusion:
The combination of these strategies was immensely helpful for Janet Though in truth, the management strategies were really just the icing on the cake: once Janet understood the true reasons underlying her procrastination, she was able to make enormous progress even before implementing the strategies.
In the course of a year, Janet’s working style underwent a dramatic transformation. She went from procrastinating on almost every big project to finishing most of her work before the deadline (and getting more sleep at night).
Perhaps most importantly, now that Janet didn’t constantly have work hanging over her head, she was actually able to relax and enjoy her life. And six months after we started working together, Janet got a promotion.
Was it solely because she stopped procrastinating? I couldn’t say. But it certainly didn’t hurt.
Thanks so much for reading. If you have any questions or comments–or want more details on any part of this article–feel free to comment below. And if you’re interested in working with me, feel free to reach out or schedule a free consultation.