Ainslie is probably right that procrastination is a basic human impulse, but anxiety about it as a serious problem seems to have emerged in the early modern era … And the problem seems to be getting worse all the time. According to Piers Steel, a business professor at the University of Calgary, the percentage of people who admitted to difficulties with procrastination quadrupled between 1978 and 2002. In that light, it’s possible to see procrastination as the quintessential modern problem.

Researchers in a several fields are looking for ways to help us overcome procrastination. Some believe that improvements in willpower offer the best solution, while others note that willpower seems to be a fixed resource that can peter out if it’s been used enough during the day.

Probably all agree, though, that David Allen’s GTD system is helps procrastinators:

Since open-ended tasks with distant deadlines are much easier to postpone than focussed, short-term projects, dividing projects into smaller, more defined sections helps. That’s why David Allen, the author of the best-selling time-management book “Getting Things Done,” lays great emphasis on classification and definition: the vaguer the task, or the more abstract the thinking it requires, the less likely you are to finish it. One German study suggests that just getting people to think about concrete problems (like how to open a bank account) makes them better at finishing their work—even when it deals with a completely different subject.

Some of the resources I’ve found most useful for addressing this problem are listed in this Keener Living article.

What has worked best for you in addressing procrastination?

No, I’ve been thinking about quitting smoking for 3 months. If I had really tried to quit, I would have done so. But I haven’t really tried because I have been listening to that little voice inside of me that says “Keener, if you try to do this, you’re gonna fail, son. So why bother? You know how you hate to fail at anything.”

Kinda dumb, huh? No, it’s worse than dumb: it’s frakking stupid, as the cast of Battlestar Galactica would say.

The problem is that, when we don’t try, we can’t win. Or, to put it another way:

zappos “If you don’t climb the mountain, you can’t see the view.” -Author Unknown

Of course, for the example that I’ve given, one could even say that not trying is the same as failing. I’ve got to get that little voice inside of me to realize this. Or, I’ve got to just ignore the voice and move forward.

Am I the only human being on the planet that thinks like this? Of course not. Almost everyone is guilty of using the “If I don’t try I can’t fail” excuse at times. It’s a leading cause of procrastination, especially among perfectionists. (Ever put off going on that diet because you’re afraid you won’t stick with it?)

And it can be hard to overcome. But I am convinced that anybody, including me, can overcome it if we set our minds on doing so.

…. those who were presented with concrete tasks and information responded more promptly than did those who were asked to think in an abstract way. Moreover, almost all the students who had been prompted to think in concrete terms completed their tasks by the deadline while up to 56% of students asked to think in abstract terms failed to respond at all.

Nowhere does the article mention GTD. Or the phrase Next Actions. But, GTD Next Actions is exactly what is meant by “concrete tasks.”

Those of you who have practiced GTD already know the truth of this. Those who haven’t practiced GTD really should look into it … turning your abstract thoughts and fuzzy projects into concrete physical actions will give you a huge increase in productivity, reduce your procrastination, and make you feel much, much better.

So reducing stress is pretty important, wouldn’t ya think?

Now I know some of you are thinking “what do you know about stress, Keener? You’re retired, so what could stress you out, dude?”

Well, it turns out that retirement is pretty stressful, racking up 45 stress points out of a possible 100, with the death of a spouse being the item that racks up the maximum stress points. And, as some of you know, I’ve dealt with that, too.

But, a common, yet often-overlooked source of stress, is procrastination, which is something we bring upon ourselves. And, unfortunately, most of us are afflicted to some degree with the disease of procrastination. It’s a disease I’ve never completely overcome, although I have gotten better over the years at just going ahead and doing my tasks.

One thing that I have found to be very helpful is to just go ahead and get my unpleasant tasks over early in the day. Every time I do that, it makes me feel so much better. The stress that comes from thinking about unpleasant tasks often makes one feel much worse than the actual task does. In fact, that is very often the case.

How have you reduced procrastination in your life?

What else do you recommend for reducing stress?

But, you may be thinking “so what?” and you may be on to something. Like Sarah McLachlan says in her song Angel, “I need some distraction.”

She’s right: We all need distractions from time to time. I am not one of those anal productivity nerds that believes you need to be productive every minute of the day, and that distractions are always a bad thing. An occasional mindless distraction can relieve an over-taxed mind. Some distractions even lead to creative insights.

But, everything in moderation, right? Right.

The problem is that today’s lifestyle makes it too easy to become excessively distracted. Many of us live with a computer for hours every day and pack a cell phone or CrackBerry 24 hours a day. Just these two gadgets make excessive distraction all too easy.

I’m not going to pretend to have any magic solutions to this problem. It is doubtful that there is any one-size-fits-all solution.

I’ll mention a couple of things you can do, but I primarily just want to draw your attention to this issue. By being aware of it, you have better control of it than when you are not aware of it. Plus, for those of you with children, even adult children, this might motivate you to discuss this problem with them. There are so many sources of distraction available to young people today, so that distraction is more likely to be a problem for them.

• Note:
• If you are frequently distracted, to the point of it interfering with getting done what you need to do, you may want to check out this article on ADHD (ADD). Also, if you have issues with procrastination, you may want to check this primer on procrastination.

Some Examples

I’ll give you a few examples to illustrate what I mean by distraction.

I’ve already mentioned the CrackBerry, but it is probably the most significant distractor we face. Whether the actual device is a BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile or Palm Smartphone, or another smartphone type, we all know how easily we get distracted by them.

Another common source of distractions is using your browser to check news updates. Lots of people check news sites several times a day, to see what the markets are doing, and to just keep up with the news. Nobody wants to feel like a dork who does not know what is going in the world.

It doesn’t take very long to do this, and you could probably check the news a dozen times a day without it costing you more than 10 minutes total. Except a few of those times you notice a related video on one of the news sites and decide to watch it. 15 minutes gone. Then, down at the bottom of the video is a related link to an in-depth article, so you click on it and start scanning it. It mentions a book, so you click the Amazon link and begin reading the reviews to see if you want to buy it. Another 10 minutes later, you’ve ordered the book and realize you’ve got 5 minutes to walk to another meeting.

And, if you are glued to the computer several hours a day, like I am, there can be other sources of distraction. For example, for me, I get distracted because of my hobbyist interest in coding. I will see an article on how “gzip compression” can speed up web page loading, and off I go spending hours on the topic, asking Thomas for his thoughts, testing out some of the recommended methods on my test server, and so on. I can easily spend a day on this sort of thing (and have), and it serves no value for me at all. Right now there is simply not enough server load for me to even bother my head with this sort of thing, but I am sucked into it because it is new to me, gives me a chance to learn, and so on.

Okay, Enough Examples. How Do We Solve This?

I mentioned earlier that there are no catch-all solutions to this problem. Differing personality types require different ways of dealing with this. For those of you with exceptional willpower, just my mention of this problem is enough for you to solve it: just by being aware of it, you will solve it.

For the rest of us, being aware of the problem helps some. But for most of us to deal with this effectively, we have to erect some sort of barrier between us the and the distraction. One way to do this is to schedule as much of your day as possible. Even if you don’t have a day full of meetings, make appointments with yourself for specific tasks and projects. And then commit to keeping those appointments. That way, you don’t leave a lot of time for distractions. As to the CrackBerry problem, one (hard-to-do) solution is to just turn it off at certain times, such as the weekend, or at least part of the weekend.

Another way is to schedule some time for the distractions. This is what I am currently doing. I now give myself an hour per day to “chase code” and I resist doing it at any other times.

Admittedly, these are simple-minded solutions, because I am a pretty simple guy. Perhaps you have some other solutions. Regardless, I’d like to hear your thoughts.

The Example

For the past few weeks, I have had a few projects that I have made zero progress on. None. Zada. Zip.

Of course you can guess the reason for this: the projects had no next action.

You say, “How can this be, Keener? How did those projects ever make it past your Weekly Review?” Good questions. I put the projects onto my Projects List during a weekly review about 3 or 4 weeks ago, when I was reviewing my Someday List. I saw these items on my Someday List and said to myself “I really should do these … they’ve been Someday Items for a long while.” So, I put them on my Project List and then told myself I would assign Next Actions for them “when my head was more clear.”

Well, my head has been clear plenty of times since then, and I still have not come up with the next actions for the projects. The reason is that my head is not really committed to getting those projects done, even if “my heart” thinks they should be done.

So, these items either need to go back on my Someday list, or I need to come up with next actions. I am thinking right now that I need to answer “what aspect of Project X am I willing to commit to?” Then, that aspect can become the project. In other words, for each of these items, I need to break what was a sort of “meta item” into smaller pieces that I am willing to commit to as projects. By doing that, then I can think of a successful outcome for the project and a next action, and then I will move on it.

The Lesson

Whenever you find yourself saying “I really should do this,” ask yourself if it is expressed at a level that you are ready to commit to. Your brain has to agree with your heart before you’re going to get it done. If you really feel like you should do it, but are not ready to commit to it, then create a project that says “what aspect of Someday Item X am I willing to commit to and do?”

Before you add a project to your list, you need to ensure you are committed to it, that you can define a successful outcome for it (and visualize it happening), and that it has at least one next action that you can really do and are willing to do.

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:

1. Ensure all the activities you need to do are written down in a trusted system (paper planner, PDA, etc.)
2. Separate the actions into Next Actions, which are actions you can accomplish with one step, and Projects (activities requiring more than one action).
3. 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.
4. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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:

• Digging Into Your Mind
• Would You Know If You Have ADD?
• Hope Is Not a Method

What are your thoughts on procrastination? What works best for you in managing it?

Who doesn’t, you say? You are right: we all hope for things. Having hope and optimism in a situation you cannot control makes sense. But, when you can control the outcome, why hope? Why not just plan and do?

Even the most action-oriented people can fall into the “hope trap” on occasion. Regardless, if we can catch ourselves doing it, we can plan and do instead.

That brings me to some thoughts on planning and what a plan should entail:

• A statement of the desired successful outcome. David Allen reminds us of this time and again in his classic Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity … it is something we need to be reminded of until it becomes a habit, a way of thinking. And, of course the outcome should focus on win-win outcomes, as Covey would remind us in his classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
• A sequence of actions and a timeline. This is pretty obvious, but to be complete, we state the obvious as well as the sometimes-overlooked.
• A listing of contingency steps, as needed. Things don’t always go as planned (or hoped), and you need contingencies for when they don’t.
• A list of resources and accountabilities. Not needed for the simple plans that you can implement yourself, but an essential element for a plan involving others.
• A list of assumptions. An often overlooked but important element to consider. Your action sequence is based on assumptions, as is your successful outcome. You serve yourself well to write those assumptions down and think about how realistic they are.

Anything I’ve overlooked?

In a previous, related post, I talked about the importance of spending time to understand your beliefs. For example, if you procrastinate, you are not going to stop procrastinating until you figure out why you do it. The why will be related to a belief you have, or to several beliefs. Once you identify those beliefs, you can then work on modifying them so you can overcome procrastination.

Because I consider this to be such an important subject, I am going to share some personal beliefs that I recently realized, ones that have contributed to my addiction to cigarette smoking (a 35-year addiction).

Frankly, these beliefs embarrass me. I am not proud to share them with you, but we all learn from sharing, so I am willing to embarrass myself if it can help you.

As I dug deep into my beliefs, I discovered that one of my core beliefs is that:

• I am nothing but my brain, because I am small and unattractive.

This probably relates to my continuing to smoke because I believe that

• My brain is “not superior” if not charged by smoking (the effects of nicotine) and by getting caffeine (I drink a lot of coffee, too).
• Smart people are different than other people and do things different than other people … most people don’t smoke, so smoking makes me different, and “therefore” makes me smarter.

Am I just making excuses? Gosh, I hope not. I hope identifying these beliefs can help me overcome them. Now that I have written them down, I can see how stupid they are. Knowing that I have some stupid beliefs makes me want to change them. How do I change them? Well, I haven’t gotten there, yet. But, I can and I will.

Uncovering these beliefs took a lot of thinking and a lot of writing. I went through several pages of writing down a behavior I have, asking what belief likely leads to it, asking why I have that belief and what underlying belief causes it, and so on. Getting down to the beliefs that are buried in your subconscious takes effort. My estimation is that I still have several more beliefs to discover.

But, fundamental to all of this is that, even though I have had beliefs for years that I did not realize, they still impacted my behaviors, my actions. And, digging down to the core belief level, as I have begun to do, ties a lot of things together. For example, my core belief that I am nothing but my brain also contributes to my restlessness (I am always doing something from the time I get up to when I go to bed) and to some other behaviors, too.

As I noted above, I am embarrassed by some of my beliefs. You will likely discover you have a few you are not proud of, either. But, to discover them, you have to invest the time and you have to keep looking at your behaviors and asking why, and then why again, and so on.

Your thoughts on this (other than the obvious fact that I need to stop smoking)?

ADD, or ADHD, (Attention Deficit Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is probably both over-diagnosed and under-diagnosed. Some people are told they have it when they probably do not, and many people have it without being told they have it. It is a hard condition to diagnose.

ADD rarely crossed my mind until I was in a bookstore a while back and noticed a book entitled Delivered From Distraction, and started flipping through it. As I did, I noticed things like:

• Extreme impatience (me for sure)
• Excessive distractability (me … I have way too many interests)
• Impulsivity (me, when it comes to buying stuff I want)
• Doesn’t read books all the way through (Whoa! That’s me, for sure.)

So, I bought the book and have picked up some good tips that I am putting to use. I discuss those below, along with a few more eye-opening questions the authors (two medical doctors) ask. Before getting into those points, it is important to note that:

• ADD, attention deficit disorder, should probably be named ASD, attention surplus disorder – there is no deficit of attention at all: rather there is attention on many, many things at once.
• People with ADD can be successful; in fact, very successful. The authors discuss some who are. So, ADD can be a frustrating condition, but not necessarily a crippling one.
• When I discussed this with an associate, he stated (only half in jest) that most of the professionals we know probably had ADD. This makes me wonder if the pressures on modern professionals actually cause many ADD-like symptoms. Hence, I thought it would make a good topic for discussion.

The authors discuss several things that one can do to overcome the downsides of ADD. A few of those are:

• Reduce TV and electronics.
• Get adequate protein, Omega 3, and antioxidants.
• Do what you’re good at, not what you’re bad at: delegate what you’re bad at as much as you can.
• Get well-enough organized to achieve your goals. The authors emphasize “well-enough.” That doesn’t mean becoming another David Allen or Steven Covey or some other time management guru … just good enough to achieve your goals.

A few of the “test questions” the authors pose (they pose a huge number of them) are:

• Are you more tenacious and persistent than the average person?
• Do you perceive patterns where other people don’t see them?
• Do you feel that you are underachieving in your life, even though you may have achieved a great deal so far?
• Have you missed many opportunities due to procrastination?

So How Does One Deal With This?

For me, some of the best advice came in getting me to use paper more in my project management activities. I used a paper planner very effectively for years, but I started using Pocket PCs and other gadgets. Electronic devices, as much as I love them, probably do distract me too much: I’m always tweaking the blasted things. And there are times when I feel like a servant to them, instead of vice versa.

So, going back to using paper more is helping me a lot. By the way, if you are interested in doing this, a lot of people are now using David Allen’s paper coordinators. There are also a lot of other fine paper products you can use, including free forms available on the web. A friend of mine who was formally diagnosed with ADHD, and crippled by it for years, has found that going to paper planners has been a huge help for him. (Like me, he was heavy into electronic planners, to the point that they distracted him more than helped him.)

Speaking of using time management, you’ll need to establish whether David Allen’s or Covey’s techniques (or a combination) work better for you. If you haven’t already done so, you should read both of their books:

• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Some ADD sufferers have told me that GTD saved their lives, while others have said the same about Covey’s techniques. I’ve always been blessed at managing time well, but still learned a lot from both books, and I use techniques from both.

I’ve also have been taking Omega 3 supplements for a month and a half or so, and I do think they are helpful (although I have no quantitative support for that).

I suspect that there are several who have ADD/ADHD but have not been diagnosed (myself included). Hence, I thought posting on it might be helpful to others.

Update:
In a private email, a friend who has been diagnosed with ADD relayed the following points to me:

• He read an article that said that a dopamine defect appears to be a cause (or contributor to) ADD.
• There are a lot of slight variations with ADD symptoms, so diagnosis is not straightforward.
• As my friend stated: “One thing common with ADD is “hyperfocusing” – where you can put an incredible amount of attention/focus on a topic for a period of time.”
• The fact that my symptoms have surfaced only in the last few years does not jive with classic ADD, which is in play all of one’s life. However, there is some evidence that life-changing events (the loss of my wife) can alter body chemistry. I know it’s altered my weight: I’ve lost 26 pounds and was never heavy to begin with.

I am still uncertain as to whether I have ADD. But, these additional facts seemed worthwhile to point out. And, it’s important to note again that you want to get well-enough organized to achieve your goals. Don’t spend time trying to become a ninja at these techniques … just use them well enough to serve you.

Do you have thoughts to add to this?

Other articles I’ve written that may help those with ADD::

• What Do You Want to Accomplish by Friday?
• Questions to Ask Yourself Periodically
• Keeping a Daily Record
• Keeping Your Brain In Shape
• Is Technology Holding Your Back?

A good book on ADD is: Delivered from Distraction: Getting the Most out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder