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Beyond Time Management: Why We Really Procrastinate and How to Finally Stop - Ambition & Balance
Ask for help
When my work directly affects others, I find it much harder to accept the consequences of procrastinating.
You could ask a friend or colleague to help you get started on something you’ve been putting off.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Key Ideas
Why you procrastinate
Procrastination is fundamentally an emotional reaction to what you have to do. The more aversive a task is to you, the more you’ll resist it, and the more likely you are to procrastinate.
Make a task less aversive
When you notice yourself procrastinating, use your procrastination as a trigger to examine a task’s characteristics and think about what you should change.
By breaking down exactly which attributes an aversive task has (boring, frustrating, difficult, meaningless, ambiguous, unstructured), you can take those qualities and turn them around to make the task more appealing to you.
Unproductive responses
... people have when they procrastinate:
- Distracting yourself, and thinking about other things
- Forgetting what you have to do, either actively or passively
- Downplaying the importance of what you have to do
- Focusing on your other values and qualities that will solidify your sense of self
- Denying responsibility to distance yourself from what you have to do
- Seeking out new information that supports your procrastination.
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Key Ideas
The #1 skill to overcome procrastination
Facing a task, experiencing the uncomfortable emotions associated with it and doing the task despite those emotions.
Procrastination is an emotion management problem
Our mind is a reason-giving machine
It rationalizes the shit out of anything that’s just a little bit uncomfortable and create excuses as to why we shouldn’t do something now. Those excuses are irrational, but sound superficially reasonable.
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Key Ideas
Procrastination is a lifestyle
20% of people identify themselves as chronic procrastinators. For them, procrastination is a lifestyle, albeit a maladaptive one.
It cuts across all domains of their lives...
Not taking procrastination seriously
There may be more of it in the U.S. than in other countries because we are so nice; we don't call people on their excuses ("my grandmother died last week") even when we don't believe them.
Not a planning problem
Procrastinators are not different in their ability to estimate time, although they are more optimistic than others.
Telling someone who procrastinates to buy a weekly planner is like telling someone with chronic depression to just cheer up.