Let’s start with a definition. Basically procrastination is
the process in which you are doing “fun” tasks before “necessary” tasks for
putting urgent tasks off to address less urgent tasks. There are two categories
which most procrastinators fall into. A) You just plain struggle with time
management and prioritizing or B) you are a perfectionist. I know a bunch of
you just went “Huh?” to reason B, but I promise I’ll explain juts bear with me.
I will be the first to tell you that I have ALWAYS been a
procrastinator. I will readily admit that during college it was not uncommon
for me to start writing a paper at 10 pm the night before it was due (gee that
sounds familiar) and writing till 2 or 3 in the morning. Usually that resulted
in not enough sleep but, by some miracle, I was getting decent grades so I
continued to operate that way. And we won’t even talk about how little use my
textbooks got in college.
And to further prove
my point I just took a break to play a round of candy crush, sigh.
As I got older and realized I could no longer operate on as little
sleep as I used to and had more and more on my plate and putting all of it off
to the last moment just doable any longer. So I decided it was time to change
my ways. Over the last decade or so (let’s
not talk about the fact it’s been a DECADE since I graduated college) I
have actually become quite good and NOT procrastinating and getting things done
a head of time. However here recently those old habits have been creeping up on
me again and I feel like I have been doing everything at the last minute. So I
thought if shared some of the things I do to stave off procrastination it would
also help me get my own self back on track.
Earlier I mentioned there tends to be two general categories
that people fall into when it comes to WHY they procrastinate. The first is
pretty straight forward, struggles with time management and trouble
prioritizing. Some people no matter how
hard they try just can’t seem to get themselves organized. That can be pretty
straight forward to get a handle on in the way of easy tips and tricks to
facilitate that process (I’ll get to those in a moment)
The other category, and the one I tend to fall into, is that
of the perfectionist. Now I’m sure that sounds strange to some of you, it
certainly did to me the first time someone said it to me. My response was if I
was a perfectionist I would be working on things way in advance and revising
and reworking things till they were just so and ready to go. Yes, that is one
way in which perfectionism can manifest itself. However, if you think about it,
it also makes sense as manifesting itself as procrastination. For me it gives
me an outlet other than my own shorting comings as to why I didn’t get a
perfect grade on that assignment or that session prep wasn’t as good as it
could have been. I didn’t have enough time to do it perfectly (never mind I am the reason I didn’t have
enough time, our brains are very good at ignoring logic when it suits us)
So how do I/we overcome the problem of procrastination? Well
if you fall into the perfectionist camp that is going to require some work on
accepting the fact that no one is perfect and that is okay. Sometimes that work
can be done on your own through the use of thought logs and other cognitive
behavioral methods. Since there is going to be some anxiety tied to that, allow
me to link you HERE to my favorite resource for starting to address anxiety. If
you find yourself struggling to get that in check on your own don’t be afraid
to recruit the help of a professional.
As for general time management and organization allow me to
share with you the 2 things that work the best for me:
Lists
I live and die by my lists, if it’s not on a list chances
are I will forget that I am supposed to do it. Now don’t just go make a list
that is 3 pages long of things you need to get done. That leads to getting overwhelmed
and then inevitably Netflix and chill. Instead make several lists.
- Most important every task has to have a deadline, whether it is imposed by you or by someone else deadlines help trust me.
- Next I have 2 bigger lists labelled “This week” and “Later”. I think those are self-explanatory but just in case “this week” is stuff I need/want to get done this week and “later” means it can wait.
- Then each morning at the office I make a “today” list. This list I try to keep to 3 to 4 things. What 3 or 4 things are the most important to do today. I also keep this list short because I want to feel accomplished every day. If I get more than that done in a day GREAT but if I don’t I still want to be able to be at the end of the day and feel like I accomplished what I needed/wanted to.
Rewards.
Now this one works well for some and not so well for others.
For me this is an amazing motivator. If I am working on a task that is not one
I am super excited about but is necessary (session notes and accounting work
comes to mind) I set myself up for success by working in some rewards.
Sometimes this is based on working for a certain length of time or completing a
certain portion of the task once that is complete or that time has passed I get
a reward. Now these are not major rewards, usually it’s like 5 minutes to play
a game on my phone or 5 minutes on twitter to see what’s happening then it’s
back to work. This works for me for 2 reasons, one it breaks things up into
smaller chunks, I don’t have to worry about ALL my session notes I just need to
work on them for 25 minutes then I get a break, and I can do just about
anything for 25 minutes. And two, I just like rewards, who doesn’t like taking
a minute to pat themselves on the back and give themselves treat.
So there it is, my tips and trick to combating the evil
procrastinator monster. Now that it is almost midnight, I am going to rewards
myself with some sleep and try again tomorrow to conquer the procrastination tendency
living inside my brain.
***All images from google images***
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