Practical Tips for Procrastinators, Part 1
It’s midnight before the big exam, and you’re just pulling out the book to study. The garage is full of junk, and you’ve been promising to clear it out since the Mets won the World Series. There are so many things to do, they need to get done right now, and yet they linger on the list. What’s going on here? Why can’t we just get things done?
The concept seems simple enough. Something needs to get done, so do it! But somehow it doesn’t always work that way. We tell ourselves there’s no time, or we suddenly become interested in doing something else. Anything else, really. Time to prepare your taxes? The plants need watering! Homework due tomorrow? Suddenly it’s time to catch up on all the news you missed last week. And so on. Procrastination is pervasive, yet seldom understood or conquered. Why do we put off doing things that need to get done?
Why We Procrastinate
The myth of procrastination is that it is caused by a lack of discipline, willpower, or self-control. This is rarely the case. Perhaps the simplest way to explain this phenomenon is that we put off tasks that make us uncomfortable. Certain activities, such as taking out the garbage, can be unpleasant. Other activities, such as exercising, can take a lot of effort to begin, especially if they aren’t ingrained as a habit. Cleaning out that closet can seem like it will take forever. Preparing a will or setting up life insurance is a task fraught with often unconfronted fears of death. It can be easier to avoid all of these. And, to complicate matters further, our feelings about the tasks on our list are often below the level of our awareness.
Here is a list of some characteristics of activities we push off (keep in mind that one task can have multiple characteristics, and that this is a simplified list):
Large tasks. We put off cleaning the house, learning a language, and planning a vacation because these tasks seem daunting and insurmountable. We may not know where to start, and we may be afraid that we’ll never finish.
Take going to the gym as an example.Your brain has a field day with this! If you want to go to the gym, you may naturally think about all that is involved with the trip. And your brain will be off to the races: What if your shoes don’t fit? The parking in that neighborhood is a pain. What if there are no machines available to use? Should you buy a membership? Maybe you should bring your own music, since you don’t really like the music they pipe in. And what about the next time? Will you really be able to do this on a consistent basis? Next Tuesday there’s a wedding. Will you able to go then? And you can’t just exercise without dieting as well! What kind of food plan should you go on? And so on, and so on. Thus a relatively simple task like going to the gym today becomes a monumental undertaking. We get overwhelmed, and we don’t even start.
These items can stay on our to-do lists for days, months, or years, taking up brain space and causing much anxiety. And sometimes the sheer number of the things on our to-do list can paralyze us as well.
Things we want to do well. Writing a research paper, updating a resume, and creative projects are good examples of things we want to do well. We fear we won’t be able to do them perfectly, or that we will fail, so we don’t do them at all. “It will never be good enough, so I may as well not do it”.
Fortune telling. We put off applying for a job, asking forgiveness, or pursuing a relationship because we are concerned about the outcome. We may be afraid of rejection or harsh criticism. Often, we tell ourselves a story about what the outcome will be before we even start. Of course, this causes us to not want to start in the first place.
Fears or insecurities. Going to the doctor, dieting or exercising, even pursuing a dream can bring up deep-seated fears, anxieties, or self-doubt: What is that pain in my knee? Will I need surgery? Can I lose weight and keep it off? What if I can’t? What if I try to start my dream business and find I’m just not cut out for it? Often lurking below our level of awareness, these feelings cause us to do anything to avoid confronting our worst nightmares. Subconsciously, it’s easier to think we could have succeeded rather than to know for sure that we can not.
Underlying distress. Often there is accompanying shame and guilt about not having done these actions. We feel badly and berate ourselves for our lack of action. The longer we have been procrastinating, the greater the shame and guilt. The anxiety of an undone task grows as well each time we put it off. So the longer we procrastinate, the more effort it takes to finally accomplish the task.
So what can you do to overcome these difficulties and get stuff done? Check back next week for part 2!
A similar version of this post originally appeared in the February 2014 Jewish Press mental health supplement Mind, Body, and Soul. It is posted here with permission from The Jewish Press.