Now that I am semi-retired, I have observed my growing tendency to procrastinate. I have had to work on this before, so I know it is manageable. But, I also know it can be harder for some people to manage than it is for others. Hence, I thought sharing some resources on managing it would be worthwhile.
Procrastination can arise from not consistently using good time management habits, or it can have deeper roots and causes, as discussed below.
The following techniques can help those who procrastinate because of inconsistent use of good time management tools:
- Ensure all the activities you need to do are written down in a trusted system (paper planner, PDA, etc.)
- Separate the actions into Next Actions, which are actions you can accomplish with one step, and Projects (activities requiring more than one action).
- For each Project activity, write out what Next Action will move it forward and put that into the Next Actions part of your list. It is especially important that you do this for any activity that you have had trouble moving forward with. For example, millions of people in the US procrastinate in filing their income tax returns, often because the action they have on their task list (if they keep a list) is “File Taxes.” This activity needs to be broken out into several Next Actions, such as: (1) Round up tax records information, (2) Buy TurboTax software, … (n) etc.
- Schedule tasks you are having a hard time with. For example, if you need to review a set of expense reports, and you keep postponing it, just put it on your schedule for the following day (or the earliest spot you can fit it). I used to put a lot of these types of tasks into a 7:00AM slot, so I would face them early and get them off my list.
Some of the best resources I have seen for time management are:
- David Allen’s Getting Things Done
- Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour work Week
- Merlin Mann’s Getting Started With GTD
- Lifehacker’s recent summary article on How To Actually Execute Your ToDo List
Many of the websites listed in our Blogroll (see sidebar) are also excellent resources for time management information.
In my view, Allen’s and Ferriss’ books are not just purchases: they are incredible investments. They have the potential for helping you change your life for the better, and they cost virtually nothing. Ferriss’ is more about lifestyle design than time management, but his discussions of the 80-20 Rule and his insights on Dreamlining (goal-setting) are excellent.
If you have done all of the time management tricks, yet still procrastinate, you may well have the second type of procrastination. It’s the type that is harder to overcome because it driven by psychological factors. Of course this does not mean you and I are “whack-o” if we procrastinate for psychological reasons: there is some sort of psychology behind everything we do (and don’t do). What it does mean is that we need to find out what the causes are so we can address them:
- According to Psychology Today’s article Procrastination: Ten Things to Know, the root cause of persistent procrastination is lack of self-regulation. I agree completely with their assessment. I disagree with their assessment that procrastination is not caused by time management problems: I believe it is a contributing cause for many people, but agree with Psychology Today that it is not the cause for chronic procrastinators.
- While a psychologist would urge you to seek treatment for this, my recommendation is to first see if you can analyze the “cause of the cause” yourself.
As regular readers know, I am a huge fan of self-analysis:
- You start by identifying your behaviors and then you ask yourself “why do I have that behavior? … what belief would lead me to this behavior?”
- That helps you to identify a belief.
- Then, you ask “why do I have that belief?” That helps you identify a deeper belief.
- And so on.
My own struggles with procrastination (that is, with Self-Regulation) are due to two psychological factors: (1) my attention-surplus issues (see the ADD link below) and (2) a tendency to have a bit of a rebellious nature. Because I have worked to understand the causes of these, I can manage them. But it takes continuous effort to do so, because both factors are deep-rooted for me.
The The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play is an excellent resource for helping you identify underlying causes of procrastination.
I also recommend the following resources from our blog:
What are your thoughts on procrastination? What works best for you in managing it?
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