Years ago I was living in an apartment complex where my mailbox was in an inconvenient place. As I arranged for more and more bills to come via email, my need for my mailbox shrank and shrank until one day I just stopped going. Some time later exciting about a letter I was expecting, I journeyed out to my mailbox to find a note from the post office explaining that they had taken my mail hostage (my words not theirs) and I'd have to go and pick it up if I ever wanted to see it again (again my words not theirs). At family dinner I griped about the wicked postal system. How could they do that to me? My brother-in-law said simply "we need to get you a dog." I had no idea at the time what my dog had to do with my mail, but now it makes perfect sense.
It's easy to procrastinate something we don't want to do. It is very easy not to want to do something . . . anything really. It's easy not to want to wash my make up off before going to sleep. It's easy not to want to complete all my writing projects by my own self-imposed due dates. It's easy to put off until tomorrow preparing to run a 5k. Anything both large and small can be procrastinated and much like my mail, something that seems so small, when procrastinated long enough, can result in a bigger headache.
#1 Create Routines
So, what does a dog have to do with it? Harry forced me to create routines and to keep my routines. I cannot procrastinate walking Harry with much success. Either he'll sit on my chest and lick my face until we go (in the morning) or he'll take matters into his own hands and go on my carpet (in the evening). Come rain or sun or blizzard-like snow, Harry must be walked. In doing so, he proved to me that I can do something, even when I am not in the mood. Carving out a set routine is the easiest, simplest way to overcome procrastination.
Stop thinking about it and make it into something that you just do. This will take some initial inertia, but in time the heinous task will become second nature.
#2 Just for a Bit
Have you ever played that game with yourself where you challenge yourself to go running for just ten minutes and if, after 10 minutes you want to turn around, you can? If you haven't, you should. I do this with just about everything in my life that I don't feel like doing from my dishes to my MBA homework. Most frequently my homework. Ideally I study every day for two hours. Most days I don't want to. But I've started playing a game with myself: just do 10 minutes and then I can quit. Typically I will knock out a chunk of my work faster than I would at the last minute. And, if I do quit after 10 min (and sometimes I do) I find that I still feel a sense of accomplishment. The little bite I take out of my homework each day, is just that much less I have to do the next. Doing a little bit is better than doing nothing at all.
#3 Time Block
Another lesson I've learned in school (this time around) is to carve out a set period of time for my work. Stop waiting for the perfect moment! Perfect moments rarely ever come. On Tuesday at 7 pm until 9 pm I will sit down and do my work. Whatever isn't finished on Tuesday spills over onto Wednesday and then Thursday. These set hours allow me to focus on completely on my task and prevent me from both waiting for the moment when I am just ready and excited to do my accounting homework (never gonna happen) and multitasking through my project.
The truth is that overcoming procrastination is a process of small, seemingly tiny decisions that we make over and over again. It won't feel like you are tackling anything huge at first, but one day, you'll turn around and realize you've accomplished much, much more and with so much less resistance than you'd previously thought possible.
What are some ways that you've tackled procrastination?
