How to Overcome Procrastination?
Understand the procrastination roots and unlock your productivity.
Procrastination kills your time. Even if you are conscious of the potential negative consequences, it is hard to keep it behind. Delaying or putting off tasks until the last minute affects your mental health. Overcoming procrastination can be challenging, but it is worth it!
As a procrastinator, I always try to learn the ways out. Many reasons led me to the procrastinator mode, and I'll share my process for managing it.
⌛ Why Are You Procrastinating?
😶🌫️ What Are Your Excuses?
🧠 What Is Your Reason?
🏆 How Can You Overcome it?
Keep track of your tasks.
Break things down.
Pay attention to your thoughts.
Get rid of distractions.
Reward yourself.
🤯 Watch Your Mental Health.
⌛ Why Are You Procrastinating?
Understanding why you procrastinate is crucial to identifying when you're in this mode. People tend to be motivated more by immediate gratification or rewards than long-term ones. This is called present bias, and it explains why it feels good to procrastinate (until you can't do it anymore).
Things get worse if you make decisions based on assumptions, such as underestimating how long something takes to be done or assuming you need to be in the perfect mood to perform a task.
Procrastination is sustained by a false sense of security when you believe you still have plenty of time to complete something. Unclarity is a powerful enemy for procrastinators. If you don't know the details, the gap between the time you need to invest and what you think it would be gets bigger.
😶🌫️ What Is Your Excuse?
Convincing you about something is your brain's superpower. To be able to procrastinate, you find good excuses. If you don't challenge them, procrastination is the only possible output.
Knowledge: You hide behind a lack of knowledge in how to do something or what you need to do.
Wiliness: You don't take the initiative to start because you wait for the right moment.
Habit: You're used to waiting until the last minute and might believe you work better under pressure.
Overload: You delay one task in favor of another.
Confidence: You believe you can finish it at the last minute.
Apart from the knowledge, I experienced everything on this list in different situations. For example, the wiliness impacted my journey as an artist. I was always waiting for a moment of inspiration. Art needs a lot of consistency.
🧠 What Is Your Reason?
Passive procrastinators have trouble making decisions to get things done. It could be your case, or if you are like me, you are an active procrastinator and are often confident that you will find a way. It's never a single thing; here are some examples.
Your bar is too high, and you don't believe you can finish a task that can reach this level. So, you prefer to avoid it because you fear that people will judge you.
You ignore the details. When you realize the amount of work, it seems too much, and you start postponing it to avoid suffering.
You struggle to define priorities and find time to finish everything. You push yourself into multi-tasking, foolishly attempting to get more things done.
You fear the unknown. It brings anxiety and makes you worry about everything. Putting you in a frozen mode.
You like the challenge of working under pressure. Somehow, you develop satisfaction with it.
🏆 How Can You Overcome It?
Keep track of your tasks.
People often have to-do lists. But getting lost in many tasks is easy, even worse if you tend to get many of them. To-do lists are good, but you also need a prioritization system. Keeping a task journal is also important to understand what you can do.
I often underestimated my tasks. After tracking them, I learned what I was able to do. It made planning much easier and more realistic, helping me delegate and say "no."
Break things down.
It's better to have many small items than a few big ones when keeping a to-do list. It gives you two significant advantages:
It's difficult to underestimate something when you visualize the details.
You get more rewards along the way by checking your tasks. It increases your wiliness and motivation.
Pay attention to your thoughts.
Pay attention to thoughts of procrastination and try to resist them. Force yourself to spend a few more minutes working on your task. It often makes the feeling go away. If it doesn't work, allow yourself a break. It works as a reward for your attempt. But set a specific time and go back to what you need to do.
Get rid of distractions.
Turn off any sources of distractions when working on something. The distractions are not always obvious. You need to understand what gets your focus away. Ironically, work is what distracts me more from working.
Reward yourself.
Give yourself small doses of rewards. Identify small things that make you feel good. It can be simple things.
I love rewarding myself with "me time," such as cooking a special meal and drinking a glass of wine. Besides being a reward, these activities also refuel my energy.
🤯 Watch Your Mental Health.
Procrastinators often care too much about whether people like them (social esteem). If you care less about it and more about how you feel about yourself (self-esteem), you'll focus more on what you need to do instead of the fear it brings.
Present bias brings an initial pleasure. But as the urgency increases, your mental health pays the price. You might face an increasing level of stress and anxiety, which also leads to burnout.
Sometimes, procrastination is a symptom of an mental health condition. I lived with depression for years, and the lack of energy made it impossible to start things. It is easier to drop something when you can't figure out how to tackle it or feel insecure about your abilities.
Understanding why you procrastinate helps you prioritize mental health and have a better life.
That's all for today! 🎉
I like getting feedback and connecting with people. Feel free to reach out—I'd love to hear from you! You are also welcome to suggest topics for future posts.
See you next time 👋