Are You Tired of Procrastinating? Here are 4 Tips to Overcome it.
Procrastination doesn’t mean your lazy — it may be programmed into you
Has your procrastination ever held you back in life? How often has the inability to get things done caused you problems?
Overcoming procrastination isn’t easy, but can be one of the most important things in your life to get rid of.
Procrastination affects your ability to work, create, and progress. The comforting thing is; we all suffer from it — it’s when it becomes debilitating that it becomes an issue. So how do you shake it off?
We all know that the longer you put something off, the worse it gets.
This continues to grow to where even the simplest task seems insurmountable. When you overcome procrastination, you take back control of your life.
This is a look at what procrastination is and four ways to overcome it.
What is Procrastination?
Why do the simplest tasks seem so difficult? It doesn’t matter if it’s putting away laundry, or calling someone back: even minimal tasks feel like an uphill battle.
Why do we seem designed to put things off?
It’s not that you’re lazy, or bad at time management, but it may go deeper. Neurophysiologists say it can be a failure in execution function. You have somehow mismanaged the way you prioritize things.
But there are differing opinions on what causes procrastination. Social psychologists consider it related to emotional regulation problems. The other obvious truth is we may put off things because we want to avoid stress.
Putting away laundry isn’t exactly a trauma, but there’s still an obligation and responsibility to do it. This can be enough to create stress — and even a little stress is still stress.
We try to avoid stress by any means necessary — even small stress — and this may be behind why you don’t want to take the garbage out.
At its core, procrastination could be self-preservation.
What Does the Science Say?
Procrastination may be part of our evolutionary makeup. The University of Colorado Boulder looked at procrastination to see if it may be genetic. They asked pairs of twins what specific work habits they had.
The study looked at fraternal twins (who only share some of their DNA), and identical twins (who share all of their DNA).
The researchers wanted to see if genetics influenced procrastination. They found that nearly half the time, differences in genetics may cause differences in procrastination. This means procrastination may be hard-wired into you.
So how do you overcome procrastination and get more things done? Here are four things to start with.
Tip #1. Start Small & Don’t Take on Too Much at Once
A good way to overcome procrastination is to just start small. Have you noticed that when you begin to clean something small, you end up cleaning the entire house? Therefore, it’s important to start small with any task.
Break the task or assignment it down into smaller, more manageable chunks. When you begin with the small thing first, it creates a spillover effect. This creates momentum and increases motivation to keep you moving forward.
It’s important to tell yourself that you don’t have to take on everything at once. Just thinking that you must can overwhelm you.
Starting small is also important for your brain. Research shows that when you start a task, your brain keeps processing it if you haven’t finished. This makes you more likely to return to the task and complete it.
The tasks we haven’t finished take up more space in our minds than the ones we have completed.
Tip #2. Recognize Your Limitations
If a task that takes a few hours seems overwhelming, consider the effort you’re willing to commit to that task. They call this “finding your resistance level.”
Instead of thinking about the two hours that seem overwhelming, what about 30-minutes? This is different for everyone, but you need to determine the minimum amount of time that you feel comfortable committing to something.
Even if it’s ten minutes; it’s a starting point. And this leads to the next tip.
Tip #3. Divide the Task into Timed Intervals
The Pomodoro method is the best way to do this and makes an assignment seem much more manageable. Your brain can only fully focus on so much before it needs a break.
Francesco Pomodoro developed this method, and it uses timed intervals to keep you on task.
The Pomodoro method works like this: work for 25 minutes, then take a 3 to 5-minute break. After you have done 4 cycles of 25 minutes, you take a 15 to 20-minute break before starting again. This helps to give your brain a breather before stress can set in.
This method is brilliant for productivity but also improves your time management. It also makes it easier to start a task. If you know there are breaks coming up soon, it’s easier to begin.
Having to do two straight hours of work sounds awful, but 25 straight minutes seems very doable.
Tip #4. Consider the Damage From Procrastinating
Not putting away your laundry doesn’t have any repercussions, but other tasks might. If you’re putting off something big, make a list of what can happen if you don’t complete it. Sometimes you need to look at this list to see the consequences more clearly.
This can even work on a small scale such as not taking out the garbage. Here are the possible consequences of delaying taking out the garbage:
- The garbage will build up and start to smell
- There will be so much that you’ll probably have to split it into a couple of bags which creates more work.
- The garage could rot, making you have to clean around that area and use air fresheners to take the smell away. You must buy air fresheners if you don’t have any, which means a trip to get them, or ordering them and waiting. You now have to spend money, which wouldn’t have happened if you just took the garbage out.
- Having people over will be embarrassing if your house smells like a landfill.
You can see how something small can spiral out of control. If you feel overwhelmed and want to put something off, write a list of what will happen in the long run that could end up hurting you.
Final Thoughts
Getting rid of procrastination won’t happen overnight, nor will you get rid of all it. It’s more about managing it. It helps to clear your mind from distraction to better focus on the pressing matter. If you have to turn off your phone to get over procrastinating — then so be it.
Don’t feel bad about procrastinating because we all do it. And you can see now that a lot of it appears to be genetic. Hopefully, this better understanding of procrastination — and these strategies — will help you overcome it.