How Dare You Procrastinate
Picture this. You're putting off an important task but you feel so guilty about putting off the task that you can't even relish the things you are doing instead of the thing you should be doing. Not only are you not being productive, but you aren't doing anything enjoyable while not being productive. Ugh.
It's a poisonous cycle, where you feel worse the longer you're caught in it.
Let's explore the ingredients to a potential antidote:
- Embrace the universality of procrastination
I'm a firm believer in giving ourselves grace, drawing strength from decoupling productivity from notions of self-worth. That's easier to do if we realize that the things we struggle with, like the enduring temptation to procrastinate, are truly universal. If you postpone an important task, that doesn't mean there is something inherently wrong with you as an individual. It may well just mean that — gasp! — you are a human.
Victor Hugo wrote some of the most iconic literature in history, yet struggled mightily to stay on task. To complete his monumental works like Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hugo invented a bold solution: write naked.
As told by his wife, Hugo would pre-commit to writing a certain amount each day by giving his clothes to his assistant and instructing them to withhold hold the garments until he reached that pre-determined writing goal. The results speak for (sing for?) themselves on the Broadway stage.
There are, to be sure, less extreme solutions. In Deep Work, Cal Newport briefly profiles a successful consultant named Jason Benn, who found success by locking himself in a room without electronics, giving him undistracted headspace to manually highlight the dense textbooks he needed to learn from, and then practice memorization after transferring the highlights to notecards.
You are not the only one striving to overcome procrastination. So stop beating yourself up about it already, will ya?
Hiya! If ya like what you're reading, why not forward to a friend and subscribe for a short post every Tuesday morning?
- Explore what it actually means to be productive
Procrastination isn’t a zero-sum game. It’s not as if the options are to either postpone tasks indefinitely or to get every single thing done right now. The truth, as in so many things, lies somewhere in the middle.
Moving the needle towards productivity, even incrementally, can produce meaningful gains. As James Surowiecki wrote in his classic essay Later, “Procrastination is driven, in part, by the gap between effort (which is required now) and reward (which you reap only in the future, if ever). So narrowing that gap, by whatever means necessary, helps. Since open-ended tasks with distant deadlines are much easier to postpone than focused, short-term projects, dividing projects into smaller, more defined sections helps.”
Doing smaller, measurable tasks is being productive, even if you don’t get to bathe in the glory of knocking out major projects or tasks every minute of the day. Those small wins accumulate, and in time you’ll find yourself at the destination.
Speaking of destination, be decisive about what you're moving towards. "Productivity" isn't a flat, simplistic thing. If your goal is live a healthy, dynamic, and enriching life, there are myriad ways to get there, and that doesn't have to mean (indeed, it cannot only mean) just checking off as many tasks as possible.
Define productivity, or it will define you.
- Enjoy intentional pauses
And what of those times when the brain simply isn't doing what you’ve commanded it to do? The cursor blinking rhythmically on the blank screen in front of you, taunting you at each pulse. The flagged emails to which you must respond yet you resent to an irrationally core degree. The tough conversation you’ve pushed back again and again that you know is necessary and will lead to immense relief when finished.
Yes, resolve and discipline play important roles. But when you’re truly stuck, often the best thing to do is take a deliberate, controlled break.
Get up. Go for a brisk walk, if you can. Practice some mindfulness, if that's your thing.
There's also the classic Pomodoro Technique: work for a fixed period of time, like 25 minutes, and then take a short break, like 5 minutes.
__
Above all, give yourself some grace when you're caught in a loop of pushing things off. When you feel overwhelmed by a list with 24,601 tasks on it and you don't feel like doing any of them, know that you are in the good company of a naked Victor Hugo.
