Procrastination: A Strategy for Success

Will you read this now or put it off until later?nnWhether I’m in a training or coaching role one of the most common wishes people tell me they have is to stop procrastinating. They tell me how much time they waste, how many things they could accomplish and how they could feel better about themselves if they could just stop procrastinating and get on with things. I have had so many clients who either say this or demonstrate it that I became interested in what was going on.nnOne dictionary definition of procrastination is to ‘postpone action’. This seems to make sense doesn’t it? We all know procrastination is about putting things off and avoiding the things we don’t want to do. Procrastination is the behaviour we employ just after we realise we don’t want to do something and some people are masters in the art of creative avoidance. Serial procrastinators manage to come up with amazingly creative and varied ways of avoiding things whilst others have the sofa and television strategy down pat.nnSo we know what it is but do we really know why we do it? As you may see from the title of this article I have a very different view on why we procrastinate and you only have to dig a little deeper to understand why we do it. As I have said, the normal way of thinking about procrastination is that it helps us avoid what we don’t want to do but we need to look a little further into how we motivate ourselves to get the real reason. Let me give you an example.nnA few months ago I was conducting a training. It was a networking skills training to some management consultants. The subject of procrastination came up because they realised they were putting off meeting people and building their network. I asked this question: “Who completed their self assessment tax return within a couple of weeks of receiving it?” The vast majority of people in the room receive a tax return from the government every year but only one person put his hand up. Everyone else turned to stare and some even laughed because they couldn’t believe anyone would do such a thing. The man in question looked a little sheepish at admitting such a strange behaviour. Then I asked, “Who completed it before the September deadline?” About a third of the group put up their hands. Then I asked, “Who did it between then and the end of the year?” Again a few more hands, then finally I asked, “Who did it in January and who did it in the last week? And who ended up doing it on the last day and had to drive to their tax office to post it through the door because they had missed the post?” Up went the rest of the hands.nnSo, although everyone had the same time to do the same job, most put it off and several had to go right to the deadline before they would do it. And these are meant to be experts in advising companies how to be more efficient and successful! Just to let you know, the guy who returned his assessment within a week had a massive smile on his face at this point.nnSo what was going on?nnThey were looking at a task and imagining how unpleasant it might be. They were looking into the future and predicting how much they would not enjoy it. Who wants to go and do things they won’t enjoy? If I asked you to choose between cleaning the cooker or sitting down in a comfy sofa which would it be?nnSo this is the first part of what makes us procrastinate, we simply want to avoid unpleasant feelings. But there’s more. Then we have to pay attention to how big the feelings are that we want to avoid. If we’re thinking about a tax return we can start to imagine all sorts of consequences of filling it in. nnFirstly it’s the actual task of getting all the paperwork together and then it’s the process of organising it all, doing the sums and making sure we do it in the correct way. Doing it correctly is a big thing for most people because if we get it wrong we get into trouble with the very scary tax man. I had one student say recently that he had put his off to the last moment so the tax man would have less time to investigate. When I asked him whether they would find anything wrong anyway he said no, he was straight as an arrow. He was too scared to be anything but honest, but he still put it off, just in case.nnWe now know procrastination is primarily about avoiding potential pain of some kind but often this pain has no foundation in reality. We make it up. We worry about the worst, whether it’s real or not, and we can make up some really scary stuff can’t we? How many times have you imagined some terrible things that never came close to happening? How much time and energy have you used on your negative fantasies which, if you had used on your projects, would have created a much better life for yourself?nnOn the surface procrastination seems to protect us from the nasty things in life, both real and imagined, but why do we want to protect ourselves from them? That seems a strange question but if we focus on what we don’t want that is what we get. I want you to think of something you are putting off. When you think of it how do you feel? Not very good I suspect. So when you think of something you want to avoid you have to feel the emotions that are associated, and again it doesn’t matter if they are real or made up. But if we end up feeling bad by attempting to not feel bad why do we do this?nnBecause we want to feel goodnnThe purpose of not wanting to feel bad is to feel good. The trouble is we can get so caught up in the here and now of not feeling bad we forget the real reason we are taking the action of procrastination. nnA simple question is: Which feels better, repeatedly putting off something you have to do (and having to feel the feelings all the time you are putting it off) or accomplishing the task? The one guy who filled in his tax return got to feel good when everyone else had high levels of anxiety for nearly nine months.nSo procrastination is a strategy for success. Its aim is to avoid pain and discomfort and, when you get good at it, it means you are being very successful. But is it really what you want to be successful at? What would it be like if you could feel good in everything you do, including putting out the rubbish? We put the rubbish out every week so the house doesn’t smell. What would it be like if you could feel good knowing that putting out the rubbish improves your life? It’s only a small difference but a very powerful one.nnWhen you concentrate on the positive reasons for doing something then you get to feel good and at the same time you will be more likely to get on with the job straight away.nnOkay, so why do we put things off that we know will be good for us?nnThere are only two reasons why we do this:nn1. To avoid the pain of doing something we are not sure of / that may fail.nWe have spoken about this already so what is the next, more hidden, reason?nn2. To successfully put off success.nThis is the ‘what if …?’ reason. We sometimes put things off because, if we did finish a task, it would mean we would have to do the next thing that would take us closer to success. Many people procrastinate because they fear failure (reason 1) but many people procrastinate because they want to sabotage success.nnDo you have any clients who just don’t seem to be getting better? Is it possible there’s a good reason they don’t want to? nnFood for thought.nn© Copyright Stephen Bates 2007