A Simple Way to Break Free from Procrastination
We say we would love to live to 100% of our true potential but the truth is, reaching our full potential frightens most of us.
According to the American Psychological Association, 20% of people are classified as chronic procrastinators.
If you’re human, you’ve procrastinated and found yourself kicking into gear when the stakes felt high.
What about those tasks and goals that have minimal consequences if you don’t do them? You know, the tasks that are a passion project or a personal goal that you set for yourself? If you do it, you get to face the reality of your goals. If you don’t do it, your life stays the same and you get to kick the can down the road until tomorrow.
Building a new habit is hard because it’s not our default setting. That is because our default setting is to create the least amount of friction as possible. This is why building a some habits are easier than others.
It could take three days to build a habit of getting home from work, binge watching a show and eating junk food. While building a habit of meal prepping and going to the gym could take months.
The dopamine hit from creating little friction is smooth and seamless. Going against the friction is rough and messy. You may know deep down that you’re taking the path of least resistance but you still may find it hard to stop. There’s a reason why.
Procrastination Is Emotional
Our emotions regulate our actions to a degree that we do not understand. According to Nobel Prizing winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 95% of our decisions fall into a category he calls System 1. System 1 doesn’t rely on reasoning, it’s fast, instinctive and emotional.
System 2 on the other hand, is slower, more deliberate and a logical way of thinking.
We think our decisions each day are deliberate and within reason but the truth is, most of them are not. This is part of the reason why you shouldn’t go to the grocery store when you’re hungry because you may over buy or buy something that is outside of your health goals.
I think all of us can think of a time in our life, either in high school or college where we had to write a paper. At the time, writing a paper on a topic that you didn’t know well seemed overwhelming.
The procrastinator way of thinking is:
“I have a month to write this paper, I can’t do this all right now, I’ll start it tomorrow.”
“I have to write, gather research, cite sources, organize my outline, write the first draft, revise, write it again. I don’t know where to begin, I’ll start later when my head is clear.”
“I don’t want to do this right now. I’ll do it when I have more motivation to do it. I have a month so inspiration should strike one of these days.”
The due date gets closer, some level of panic creeps in and you have to get the work done. Working all hours around the clock is the only option and you finish the task right before the deadline. However, it wasn’t your best work and you know it wasn’t your best work. The ego will protect you and say, “well if you didn’t procrastinate, you would have done better so this grade doesn’t reflect who you are.”
Not only is procrastination emotional, it can be a protective mechanism that our ego weaponizes to make us feel better about ourselves.
I’ve procrastinated in the past and I’m not proud of it. It was along the lines of this thinking. I wondered how some of my fellow students who were not procrastinators were able to be so disciplined and never rush to a deadline. Looking back, I wasn’t paying attention to how they were thinking.
A non-procrastinator thinks this way:
“I have a month to write this paper, today, I am going to only do the outline. It should only take about 30 minutes.”
“I’ve gathered all my research, now it’s time to write for 1 hour, if it’s not perfect that’s okay, I’ll have time to revise it.”
“I’m not motivated to do this right now but writing 200 words will take me 20 minutes and get me closer to the goal.”
Those fellow students who were not procrastinators got their work done by taking a big goal and breaking it a part into smaller ones. It seemed to be a mindset that was embedded into them. How do you change that mindset if you do not have it?
Breaking Down Large Goals
I never got this concept until I started to run ultra marathons. When I ran my first ultra marathon, it was a 50 mile race. About 15 miles into the race, I was tired, then a thought popped up, “You have 35 miles left! How are you going to do this?!”
It was a scary feeling. With overwhelm, my first reaction before quitting was to make it to the next aid station which was about 3 miles away. I made it to the aid station and then the goal was to make it to the next one. After running 30 miles, I reframed the remaining 20 miles to 4 sets of 5 miles. Even though it didn’t change the reality of what I was going to have to do, the reframing kept my mind from wanting to quit.
This same concept applies to reaching many larger goals in life. In writing a book, the idea and concept of writing a book might seem simple. However, when you are faced with 70,000 words, research, making every chapter flow, rewriting, editing, book cover, publishing and a years worth of work, it seems daunting.
Pushing it off to another day is easy. Missing one day in a goal that is 365 days is only like 0.27% of the goal. Pretty soon the next excuse will be, “if I had time to write a book, I would do it.” This is another excuse for the ego to protect itself out of fear of failure.
For ten years, I’ve wanted to write a memoir. I never knew where to begin. It wasn’t until I broke down every chapter and every scene within that chapter that the direction of the book became obvious. Now it’s all about writing that complete first draft. Committing to sitting down to write one scene a day is easy. Committing to writing without direction is hard. I’m proud to say that I am 50% done at this point.
If you get to the point where you have broken down your goal to a bite sized chunk and still procrastinate, ask yourself, why?
Asking Yourself Why
Asking yourself why you are procrastinating is something that will take some hard self reflection. I would recommend journaling through this. You can grab pen and paper and write down all the reasons why you are procrastinating doing a task. After going through this exercise for long enough, you’ll start to notice the reasons as they come up.
Some of these questions might be laid out as this:
Am I overwhelmed by the task?
Do I fear failure?
Is this task boring or not interesting?
Do I feel like I’m not prepared or qualified to do this?
Is there something else on my mind distracting me?
Fear and self doubt is the most common reasons why. Fear and self doubt isn’t fun and we don’t want to do tasks that we don’t find fun. Especially when it’s something that we used to find fun and begins to feel like a chore.
If you’re someone like me who started writing because you thought that it’s fun, you’ll find that some parts of writing are often not fun. I try to remind myself that any goal worth achieving has parts of it that are tedious and boring. It’s not always going to be fun. The fun is in achieving the goal.
Whenever I am procrastinating, I try to go through this process to help myself discover why I am putting it off:
Why am I not writing the memoir about my dad?
I wanted to go to the gym instead.
Why did I want to go to the gym instead?
I missed my workout this morning.
Why did you miss your workout this morning?
Because I slept in.
Why did I sleep in?
Because I went to bed to late.
Why did I go to bed too late?
Because I was watching a show instead of going to bed.
This is what happens when you don’t have your priorities identified. If your priorities are always shifting, then you will feel aimless.
Was going to the gym more important than writing my memoir for 30 minutes? No. I missed my workout this morning. Missing one task is a great excuse to procrastinate other tasks. If you flip flop on your priorities, it will create a state of overwhelm causing you to procrastinate more.
Your Future Self Vs Your Current Self
Our future self is abstract to us. We have no idea what the future will hold to us but we can take some actions to strive towards a future that we believe will be better. This is a part of being human. With all the news today about how the world is going to be ruined by the year 2050, the economy is going to crash and we will all be doomed, why would we bother thinking about our future self?
This trap can lead to a hedonistic look at life. Even if the world ended by the year 2050, ask yourself, “would I regret doing things that are important to me?”
The answer is an obvious no. If the world ended, the things you would regret would be binge watching the same TV show five times or not spending enough time with the people you love.
This is part of the meaning of sacrifice. If you sacrifice a little now, you may get a large reward later. The key word is “may.” You have to have some sort of belief that it will work out for you. If you don’t believe it’s going to work out for you, why would you want to keep doing it?
Your future self is important. Distractions will always be present. Procrastinating is often emotional because of the fears that we face within ourselves. We say we would love to live to 100% of our true potential but the truth is, reaching our full potential frightens most of us. It frightens us because we would have to face who we are and all of our shortcomings.
Great article Drew. Love the 5 'why' approach.