PROCRASTINATION

Today’s lesson learned is about PROCRASTINATION.

It’s one I learned the hard way.

(And it turns out I’m not alone.)

A whopping 75% of adults consider themselves procrastinators and 50% say that it’s constant and problematic for them.

If you’re nodding your head, no worries – I used to be in that 50%.

But I’m not anymore, and it’s not because I’ve developed some new, stronger self-discipline – believe me, I haven’t.

What I have done, is figure out why we procrastinate.

I spent the first 30+ years of my life riding the last-minute edge, often missing deadlines, and completely hating myself for it.

I called myself lazy.
I beat myself up over my lack of focus.
I felt like a loser.

In my early years, I tried adopting the mantel of underachiever – someone who “could if she wanted to.”

That only added to my frustration.

Because I actually started to believe that I couldn’t – that even if I “wanted to,” the focus and discipline required would elude me.

Of course, it wasn’t like that 100% of the time. Occasionally, some magical fire would light and I’d knock it out of the park.

But that even made the procrastination more frustrating. Why couldn’t I just do that ALL the time?

Clearly something was wrong with me – at least that’s what I believed.

And I’ve never met a procrastinator who hasn’t, at some point, felt that way too.

I was in my 30s when I read an article with the title “You’re Not Lazy. You Just Don’t Know What to Do.”

I didn’t really believe it at the time, but I liked the idea that maybe I wasn’t actually lazy and defective, so I started to deconstruct my own patterns.

I looked closely at the “knocked it out of the park times” vs the “couldn’t get off my ass times.”

Here’s what I found…

When I knocked it out of the park:

I was driven (motivated) by either fear or excitement
I knew how to do the task at hand
and there were no major impediments to any of the steps in the task.

When I procrastinated:

I was driven (de-motivated) by overwhelm
I was unclear about exactly HOW to complete the task at hand
and there were usually things (small or large) standing in the way of taking action. (I didn’t have typewriter ribbon, I didn’t know who to call for information, etc.)

Here’s the thing.

That overwhelm – the big de-motivator was caused by the other two pieces (impediments to action and not knowing how to do the thing I wanted to do).

Procrastination is not a laziness problem, it’s a clarity, and/or resource problem.

Knowing that, it becomes easy to solve.

When you’re procrastinating, chances are something about the task at hand is overwhelming you.

Figure out what it is, and you can easily resolve it.

Newsflash: Overwhelm can happen over something as seemingly simple as making a phone call to cancel an appointment or as arduous as getting your taxes done.

Don’t judge.

The next time you’re procrastinating anything at all, try this:

First, dial into the overwhelm.

Are you lacking a resource like time, money, equipment?
Do you understand how to accomplish the task at hand?
Are you crystal clear on the very next step in the process?
Are you telling yourself a story that’s exaggerating the discomfort involved?

Once you’re clear on what’s in your way:

Choose one, tiny, step to take to get started. When I say tiny, I mean it. Keep making the task tinier until it’s so ridiculous that you can’t not get it done.