Tip 19: Procrastination Busting (Part 2)

It’s the job that’s never started as takes
the longest to finish.
J.R.R. Tolkien

Following on from Tip 18 here are some more reasons why we procrastinate and some tips to help overcome the problem.

You don’t enjoy / aren’t good at the task

Let’s face it, there are some tasks that we aren’t naturally good at and don’t enjoy. I know many self-employed people who are brilliant at what they do but loathe picking up the phone to speak to prospective customers, and consequently put it off as long as they can. If this is the case, is there someone you could delegate the task to? Somewhere out there is a person who loves doing the thing you detest. Perhaps you could do a skills swap with someone who would find the job easy and enjoy doing it.

Inability to get started

Getting started is the hardest thing for procrastinators. My favourite remedy is coach Mark Forster’s strategy of ‘just getting the file out.’ Having reassured yourself that you don’t actually have to DO the task at hand, ask yourself … if I were going to do it, what’s the very first thing I’d have to do to get started? This might be to simply get the file out.

It could be to switch on the computer; find the phone number of the person you need to call; sit down at a table with a pad of paper, pick up the book … More often than not you will end up doing that first thing and, having done that, you’ll probably get stuck into the task. Just taking that first step is the key.

Everyone knows the procrastination rules: you should set your priorities; you should do the task first before you do anything else, and so on… But you need lots of self-discipline for that, and in my experience that often doesn’t work.

So what’s the answer? One of the best ways to beat procrastination is to make yourself accountable to someone else. Whether it’s a friend or family member, your boss or your coach, making a firm commitment to someone else will make a huge difference to your actually knuckling down and doing it.

So, try making yourself accountable to someone for those task(s) you’ve been putting off. Perhaps you could ‘buddy up’ with someone else: make a commitment to each other, agree a deadline and check in with each other to make sure the job is done. It really does work.

For some extra-accountability, check out my Procrastination Buster Days (details on my website) where you can make yourself accountable to a group of others and spend a day in good company, having fun and getting loads of stuff done.

Between saying and doing many a pair of shoes is worn out.
Italian Proverb

There are a million ways to lose a workday,
but not even a single way to get one back.
Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister

To think too long about doing a thing often
becomes its undoing.
Eva Young