Procrastinating sucks. That’s what you are probably thinking.
The question is:
How do I just get rid of it? And stop feeling guilty for all the time wasted?
Well that’s exactly what you’re going to learn here today.
What is procrastination:
Anybody who’s unnecessarily postponing decisions or actions (tasks, missions) for no reason, despite intending to work on it, is a procrastinator.
According to Mindtools, “procrastination is the habit of delaying an important task, usually by focusing on less urgent, more enjoyable, and easier activities instead.”
Why are you procrastinating?
This is the ultimate superhack.
You need to understand the reasons why you are procrastinating before you can begin to tackle it.
If you can define that, you’ve already done 50% of the job.
In one study, ~50% of people stated that their procrastination was due to some task characteristic, and two common task characteristics that lead to procrastination are task aversiveness (e.g. a task being perceived as boring or unpleasant), and timing of rewards (e.g. a task having rewards that are far in the future).
If you’ve read my previous email about the story that got me into coding you probably noticed the part where I struggled with abandoning projects midway through.
Another big factor contributing to procrastination is the thought that we have to feel inspired or motivated to work on a task at a particular moment.
The reality is that if you wait until you're in the right frame of mind to do certain tasks (especially undesirable ones), you will probably find that the right time simply never comes along and the task never gets completed. You can read more on the post Kendra Cherry wrote on verywellmind.com about the psychology of procrastination.
To overcome procrastination you should also recognize that you're doing it.
So, are you aware that you’re procrastinating?
If you do, reply to this by saying “I recognize that I am a procrastinator and I want to stop it”
Multitasking (or the art of not getting anything done on time)
Most people think multitasking can help them achieve their tasks faster.
And it’s a BIG MISTAKE.
“Multitasking” is a fancy way to say that you’re not giving anything your full attention.
The more things you split your focus on, the more time it’d take to get anything achieved.
As Sneha Saigal said on a reply to a tweet where I asked for the best tricks people are using to deal with procrastination: “Trying to do a bit of everything often leads to doing nothing at all.”
“Multitasking is when you try to do two things at once. Except that’s impossible”, says Sean Hogue, “… This is called Context Switching.”
And this is exhausting for your brain.
As one neuroscientist, Daniel Levitin, explains: “the kind of rapid, continual shifting we do with multitasking causes the brain to burn through fuel so quickly that we feel exhausted and disoriented after even a short time.”
Need to focus better, but don’t know how?
Here are actionable tips to clear your mind:
Turn off all social media notifications when you’d like to focus or when you feel brain fog coming on.
You’re writing on Google Docs, working on Notion or designing something on Figma? CLOSE ALL OTHER TABS.
Time chunking:
For example, set aside 9 am to 11 am to focus on responding to emails and 1 pm to 3 pm to focus on returning phone calls. Minimize all distractions throughout that time and give the task at-hand all of your attention.
What would you add to this list? Reply with your best tips.
DONE? Alright let’s keep going…
The No Zero Days Life
Remove the zero days from your life.
What’s a zero day? A zero day is when you don’t do a single thing towards whatever dream or goal that you have.
Applying the “No Zero Days” mindset to your life means you do at least one thing that’s good for you and your life. Or you make sure that every day you do something to work towards one or more goals you have.
This is how it helped me:
I achieve things 3x faster than before. I define a priority task, set a time box of 20 minutes and I start working on it. I promise myself to spend at least 20min on it and then I can stop. Sometimes I am too deep in it that when I stop it’s already been one hour or more than I am doing it.
“The hardest part is starting”, says Nat Miletic, a web dev agency owner (cliowebsites.com), “trick yourself by saying that you will only do a small portion of the task”.
Stop Overthinking Everything… it’s STUPID!!
Overthinkers are some of the best procrastinators out there. Why? Because they let their thoughts eat up their momentum. While brainstorming and preparing yourself mentally for work is a good idea, overthinking takes what could be a proactive thought and turns it into a worried, impenetrable wall of inaction.
See your overthinking for what it is. Allow yourself to get lost in your work instead of your anxious thoughts. If starting a large project makes your brain panic, break each objective into smaller, less scary, achievable tasks. How do you build an entire house? Brick by brick.
“Sometimes you procrastinate just because you don’t see the end of the line”, says Nuno Tomas
What personally works for me is two things: making a public declaration on Twitter that I am going to do something + setting a deadline (close enough to scare me so I don’t even think about procrastinating)
You are not gonna live forever, you’ve only got one life.
“A cat may have 9 lives, but you’ve got only 1, so don’t procrastinate” says Frank Eno, a very active and engaged indie game maker, web developer, musician and writer… oh wait he also has 4 kids.
Procrastinating doesn’t mean you’re lazy
Merriam-Webster - America's most trusted online dictionary - describes procrastination this way: “To be slow or late about doing something that should be done: to delay doing something until a later time because you do not want to do it, because you are lazy, etc.”
And this is not true. At least for what the latter part of this definition states.
Here is why:
The idea that procrastination is a product of laziness may be perpetuated by the lack of research regarding procrastination stats. Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago, hypothesizes that procrastination hasn’t been taken seriously in academia because many academics struggle with procrastination themselves.
“[People] think that procrastinators are just lazy,” Ferrari says. “And that’s not what’s going on. It’s an avoidance strategy. It’s a way of never demonstrating to yourself or to others your abilities or your capabilities.”
For example, someone who wants to work on a project may delay doing so (i.e., procrastinate) because they don’t know where to start, even though they aren’t lazy.
Alternatively, someone who doesn’t want to work hard on a project because they don’t want to do any effort (i.e., because they’re lazy) may get started on the project without any delay (i.e., without procrastinating).
Last thing here are some strategies by Mindtools to help you stay organized:
Thanks for reading
Two quick things…
Reply to this right now and tell me about something new you learned today? What are you planning to do to stop procrastinating?
I’ll be popping in every couple of hours to discuss with you. So make sure to leave a comment after you read the post.
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Talk soon,
Amine