creating sustainable results in growth and performance
Scientific and psychological research shows that there are five main
reasons why people put off doing things. Read on to discover what they
are, how to spot them and ways to brush them aside.
The five habits of procrastination:
- Complacency
- Avoiding Discomfort
- Fear of Failure
- Emotional Barriers
- Action Illusion
Complacency
It's not very difficult, I can do it any time
It
won't take very long, I'll start another time
I
know what I have to do, so I'm halfway there already
The first form of procrastination comes from an over-strong sense of
self-confidence, believing that I am on top of the situation and so
needn't bother dealing with it yet. It can also come across as laziness or
a general lack of concern – that so certain is the outcome, there is no
reason to try or make a special effort.
But rather than coasting to success, quite often this form of
procrastination leads to the opposite result. In the fable of the tortoise
and the hare, the hare is so sure of victory over the tortoise that he
settles down for a quick sleep, only for the tortoise to overtake and
defeat him. Similarly, in almost every James Bond film, there is a scene
where the arch-villain has the spy in his grasp, only to let him escape
and thwart his plans for world domination. In these situations, evil
cunning and over-confidence always seem to go hand in hand.
Dealing with
complacency:
One way of dealing with
this form of putting things off is to imagine a great opportunity later
on, but one that we can only take advantage of if we've completed the task
at hand. So, for example, if our passport needs renewing but we leave it
until the day before we go on holiday because it's so easy, we need to
imagine a friend ringing up with a spare free ticket for a weekend abroad:
if we haven't got an up-to-date passport, we can't go.
Alternatively, we can set ourselves more challenging goals. If a
situation isn't motivating us to finish it, let's change the situation.
With the story of the hare and the tortoise, it clearly isn't enough
incentive for the hare to just beat the tortoise: he feels (wrongly as it
turns out) that he can do that in his sleep. But if the hare had set
himself the challenge of not just beating the tortoise but also breaking
the course record, he would have carried on sprinting until the finish
line and would never have lost the race.
Finally, if the task is relatively easy, just get it done. If you're an
arch-villain in a James Bond film, just pull the trigger and carry on with
taking over the world: don't pause to gloat and show 007 the evil genius
of your plans; before you know it, he'll be raising an eyebrow, delivering
a sharp one-liner and you'll be plunging to earth without a parachute. If
you're not an arch-villain in a James Bond film you won't be rewarded with
a new world order but your own world will be a little more ordered, and
that's a start.
I'm not going to enjoy doing this
This is going to take a really long time
It's really unpleasant, I'll start another time
This sort of procrastination is all to do with the unpleasantness of the
activity, particularly compared with a far more enjoyable alternative.
When there are dishes to be washed, that television program about
gardening can suddenly become really interesting. Perhaps the visit to the
dentist can wait until next month, that telephone bill can be left until
after payday, the tax return can be done tomorrow.
There are more serious examples, too. We might be unhappy in a long-term
relationship but can't face the unpleasantness of ending it.
In
each case, our worries about the 'pain' of taking action are enough to
make us delay.
Dealing with avoiding
discomfort:
When the discomfort comes from the size of the task (the tax return?), we
can break it down into bite-size tasks instead (get the bank statements,
read the form, fill in Section A and so on). Doing one of these smaller
activities feels easier, and once we get on a roll the whole project may
be completed before we know it.
A
second idea comes from the Mary Poppins school of philosophy: the spoonful
of sugar to help the medicine go down. Many of us don't enjoy doing the
washing up but that doesn't mean we can't make it less of a chore: we
could allow ourselves a cup of coffee or a glass of wine while we scrub
away (but only if we do it now); we could burn ourselves a compilation CD
of our favourite tunes – Music to Wash Dishes By, Volume One.
Finally, here's a challenge: every day do one frustrating activity that
you would normally put off until tomorrow. Not only will you be amazed by
how much more you get done, but soon you'll run out of really frustrating
things to do.
I
really won't be able to do this properly
I've failed at this before, I'm bound to fail again
It's a big step, I'm scared I may not be able to cope
Sometimes the prospect of not succeeding is enough to put us off
starting. Imagine there's someone you find attractive and want to ask
out, but don't because you're afraid they'll say 'No'. Or perhaps there's
the possibility of a promotion at work but you don't put yourself forward
because you're worried you might not get the job.
Trying to get into a fashionable club, making sales calls, taking up salsa
classes – there are hundreds of things we may give all sorts of reasons
for putting off but the real reason is fear of failure.
Some of us even use this form of procrastination as a sort of get-out or
escape clause. By not doing the work, not trying, not making an effort, we
have an excuse for when things go wrong: It's not that I'm not good at
French, it's just I didn't bother with the revision. As a result, we may
dull the pain of failure but we will never taste the satisfaction of
succeeding against the odds.
Dealing with fear of
failure: The
problem here is nothing to do with failure: it's all to do with fear.
Mistakes are often the primary source of learning. As Simon Woodroffe,
founder of Yo Sushi!, explains, 'I looked at what every entrepreneur has
in common and I found one thing: they all make mistakes, lots of them.'
Successful people fail a lot, they just aren't afraid of it.
Think, for example, about relationships. Which is worse: never going out
with anyone, or being rejected sometimes? You only need one person to say
'yes'. Put the 'no's down to experience and learn from them: Is it my
deodorant? Or am I playing it too keen from the start? Likewise with jobs:
it doesn't matter if we get turned down so long as we learn from the
experience; we'll keep improving and sooner or later someone's going to
say 'yes'. But no one's going to say 'yes' if we never apply in the first
place.
Self-fulfilling
beliefs: The
psychologist Albert Bandura argued that one of the reasons why effective
and decisive people are effective and decisive is because they believe
they are effective and decisive. Similarly, if people think they are
ineffective and indecisive, then pretty soon that's what turns out to be
the case. Think proactive, and you're halfway to making it happen.
I’m too stressed/tired/excited to do this now
I'm not in the right frame of mind
I'm not in the mood to do this at the moment
Sometimes we use emotion as a reason to stop ourselves from taking action.
We convince ourselves that, for whatever reason, the time isn't right to
do something now and we are better off waiting for that 'perfect moment'.
Imagine suffering a nightmare journey into the office: the bus doesn't
arrive, there's no seat on the train and you arrive late and flustered.
Rather than answering the urgent email in your inbox, you decide you need
a coffee, two biscuits and a chat to your friend before you can get in
the right mood to start work. Or maybe you've already had two bits of bad
luck so you'd rather not make any big decisions until the third one is out
of the way. Or maybe you want to save some money by cutting down on going
out for a few weeks, but there are so many birthdays coming up you decide
to leave it for another month.
Dealing with emotional
barriers:
The problem with waiting for this perfect moment is that it never arrives:
there'll always be another good reason to put things off and you'll still
be waiting as the opportunity passes.
To
use the example of cutting back on going out, people are always having
birthdays or holding parties, or leaving or starting jobs and so on. If
you wait a month, the chances are you'll wait another month, and then
another.
One way of overcoming these barriers is to imagine the outcome of not
doing something immediately. You might be the sort of person who thinks,
'I'm too stressed to start this project now,' but think how much more
stressed you'll feel if you leave the project until the last minute.
Also, by taking action the emotional barrier disappears by itself. When we
arrive late and flustered for work we are more likely to change our mood
for the better by getting on with and completing a task than by reliving
our terrible journey over a coffee.
I'm very busy, so I must be making some progress
No
one appreciates quite how much I've got on
There's so much to do, I mustn't stop
Action illusionists, as the name suggests, are the magicians of the
procrastinating world. But rather than wave a wand and make people or
rabbits or the Statue of Liberty vanish, they use all their sleight of
hand to make time disappear. They're the sort of person who, rather than
revising for exams at school, would spend endless hours writing and
rewriting their revision timetable, and then say 'I don't know where the
day's gone'. The sort of person who'll just pop on the internet to do some
research . . . and will still be there an hour later. When challenged,
they'll always repeat their mantra — 'I have done so much, honest!' Which,
of course, is the biggest illusion of all.
Dealing with action
illusion:
The curious thing about suffering from action illusion is that we quite
often spend more energy not doing work than it would take to actually get
the thing done. Revision timetables, rather than a practical working
guide, easily become a work of art. If only we had that much attention to
detail in what we were meant to be doing.
If
you're an action illusionist, the key to breaking the cycle is to
understand that you are not doing what needs to be done.
You may technically be working: you keep checking your inbox; you have
another look at the monthly data; you check the provisions in the store
cupboard, even though you checked them yesterday. You are busy doing
work-type tasks, only they're not the tasks that really need to be done.
Decide what the successful outcome is. Decide what you could do which
would do the most to help you achieve this. Do it, and not lots of other
stuff that is peripheral to your objective.
