You have a deadline, and it has probably been sitting in your diary for a while. It makes all the sense in the world to get started early, but try as you might, every time you note it coming closer and closer, you can’t bring yourself to do so. There is always something else, or lots of smaller something-elses, that you choose to do first. The end result? Inevitably, the important task either gets done in a rush or doesn’t get done at all.
You’re good at what you do, and you take pride in doing things well, but in this case all you feel is relief when it’s over, rather than the satisfaction of a job well done.
Based on our 2023 survey of 4500 New Zealanders on issues from mental health and personality to politics, procrastination will be familiar to 96% of you at least some of time and an ongoing feature of your lives for one in five.
It sounds blimmin’ horrible, so why do we do it? Let’s get the mundane answers out of the way first. Sometimes, it’s hard to motivate yourself to do something that’s boring, and in which you may not see intrinsic value. Alternatively, maybe the task doesn’t involve clear goals – you have to deliver a widget but it’s not clear what that widget needs to be. For some (I’ll include myself in this), it can be time management, and a failure to recognise how much time a task will take. Not to mention the number of distractions in our lives – the ding of a text message or email, and social media or entertainment we can access at the touch of a smart phone.
That last one is interesting, because it’s not really the fault of social media/entertainment, but a deliberate choice to watch the next episode of Mr & Mrs Smith rather than work on the very-important-task. Why would we do this?
Avoidance. In previous weeks, I’ve written about my survey results regarding perfectionism and impostor beliefs; procrastination is the third leg of this evil stool. Unlike perfectionism and impostor beliefs, procrastination is not more common among women. It’s also unrelated to education or income. It’s not quite an equal opportunity challenge, though, because it’s slightly more common among younger people.
But people whose perfectionism is oriented to pleasing others and who feel like impostors are more likely to procrastinate. This is paradoxical, right? After all, if you procrastinate you’re going to find it harder to do a perfect job, or to prove to yourself (and others) that you’re not an impostor.
But this is an evil, self-defeating, three-legged stool. If you don’t get the job done, or it’s not perfect, you have the excuse that you didn’t start it until really late. You don’t have to feel so bad about not meeting your own excessive expectations. And of course it’s not going to be perfect, because you know you’re an impostor! In short, you’re avoiding something.
What’s to be done, then? Some of my recommendations are about changing how you work, and some are about working on yourself.
For a start, identify the end goal: what does the end product need to look like? Make a structured plan, including milestones. I give my students “milestones” rather then “deadlines”, and stress that a milestone is just a marker that you’ve come further than you were the day or week before. If you prefer stretch goals, explicitly recognise to yourself that they are potentially difficult to meet, so you don’t feel bad about missing a target you were always going to miss. Minimise distractions, put that phone in a drawer, and turn off notifications. Reward yourself for getting started.
Embrace imperfection; use progress towards milestones as the target rather than focusing on the end goal. Of course it’s not going to be perfect while you’re working on it. And be nice to yourself. Words to live by.
