How to overcome procrastination.

 I was recently asked the question "I spend the whole time worrying and avoiding finishing my tasks and then at the last minute I rush to finish it, been most of my life doing that, how can I cure that?"

Most people have experienced this kind of issue at some points in their lives. There are a number of underlying causes and there are also habitual causes.

With regards the to the underlying causes, there can be issues around self confidence, (anxiety about the work not being good enough or having such an unrealisitically high expectation of the completed task, that you feel too overwhelmed to start - also known as perfectionism).

First understand that there are very few tasks for most people that need to be completed at 100% perfection. There are some scenarios where this is necessary, but for most people this just doesn’t apply. Work to an acceptable level of completion. Often perfectionism comes from a deep rooted fear of criticism, so subconsiously, rather than accept the criticism, procrastinators will put things off and then when there is any kind of negative feedback, they can justify it as not having enough time to complete the task properly. This of course is a self delusion which prevents you from every delivering a consistently decent level of work and will ultimately rob you of any future opportunities, because you have been unable to deliver work to a good standard, because you keep putting off starting in the first place.

Understand, that to deliver at a high standard does not require 100% perfection. The standard of most people’s work is so low in my experience, even if you deliver 75% standard work, in most cases this is ok, and if it isn’t, then you will still have plenty of time to improve it. Beyond the 80% level, you will often get diminishing returns on the quality of your work, so in most cases it is not worth completing the work beyond this level.

When I started working for myself, one of the most helpful and productive things that I learned, was to have a very low standard of success. This seems very counterintuitive to most advice out there, however, it meant that I could at least get some success on most days. Even the days that felt like there was very little progress made, I knew that if I was a litter further on, then I was still on my way. Subconsiously, this keeps you moving forward one step at a time. This can only be really applied if you don’t have any external deadlines.

If you do have external deadlines, then you will need to prioritise your work. (you can see one of my other responses in another article on how to do this).

The second aspect to the issues are habitual and this will involve you having to change some behaviours. One of the most powerful techniques to get you moving is something called the Pomodoro Technique. All that is required, is for you to commit to starting a task for no more than 10 minutes. Set a timer, and then just keep working on the task for 10 minutes without distraction or interuption until the timer ends. Once you are going, you will find it easier to keep going and then you will find that you will make more progress on your tasks.

Ultimately you need to realise that worrying accomplished nothing apart from taking your self confidence and control away from your situation. You need to first of all personally take responsibility for your actions and inactions. Then you need to be clear about what it is that you need to accomplish. Following that, prioritise your tasks, then begin, and don’t worry about it being perfect or not. As your self discipline improves with these suggestions, you will find that you will be able to complete things more quickly, and the standard of work will gradually improve, but you have to start somewhere where you can actually win, otherwise you will just continue to feel terrible about things.

One other little tip is to have a place where you can work without distraction. That means no phones, emails, notifications or social media.

In the end our lives are made up of time. Time wasted on things that are not moving your life forward or making any contribution to your life is wasted life. Life is too short as it is, so don’t spend another moment worrying, and just do what you can, where you are with what you have.

I have two recommendations of books which should be really helpful below. You can order them by clicking on the image. 

Good Luck.

Haroon