Procrastination Is A Symptom, Not A Cause

Many people identify themselves as ‘procrastinators’…they just put things off all the time for no apparent good reason… only that’s not strictly true. There are usually many factors behind the procrastination. Procrastination is the symptom, not the disease. It’s like just throwing pills at insomnia…it might work in the short term, but if you don’t sort out the reasons for the insomnia, you’ll be dependant on pills forever (another soap box of mine!)

And hey, if saying ‘I’m procrastinating’ worked, I’d say ‘go with it, keep on kicking your own butt’…but it doesn’t. It actively HURTS. People label themselves procrastinators and it doesn’t help them get whatever they want to do done. It doesn’t help them feel great about themselves (in fact, it’s often the direct opposite). In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that labelling it ‘procrastination’ actually gets in the way of getting the task done.

Because you’re ‘procrastinating’, so you ‘should’ just do it, right? But you’re not. Because you’re procrastinating. And there’s nothing you can do about you procrastinating. Other than force yourself to do it…and if you could do that, you wouldn’t be procrastinating! A beautifully circular argument that there’s no way out of. But what if instead you said to yourself ‘hey, I’m putting X off, what’s going on’ and fixed the underlying problem so you can crack on with your task?!

Hey, I know, sometimes you are ‘just’ procrastinating, and giving yourself a swift kick up the backside works (it doesn’t make you a bad person!)…but most of the time, a slight change of focus will help far more than beating yourself up for procrastinating! It’s almost never as simple as “I’m procrastinating. Full stop.”

The symptom of procrastination is usually masking a deeper cause.

If this infographic is blurry, click on it to see the full size, unblurred version!

You can see in the above infographic the questions to ask yourself about whatever you’re putting off…let’s go into each in a little more detail.

Do you want to do it?

I always have to start with this one because it’s the biggie. If you don’t want to do it, of course you will put it off and put it off and put it off! Check first if it’s something that really has to be done? Do you ‘have to’ go to the gym? No? So fuggeddaboutit. Find another way to get fit! Do you have to do your accounts? Yes. Could someone else do them? If so, why not get some help? I know you are superwoman and you can do everything yourself, but the joy of living in the 21st century is that you don’t have to! But if you have to do it and you can’t get help, you’ve just got to do it, find a way to make it fun so you can get it done! Hey, I get it! For years, I put off doing my accounts – they’re boring, tedious, and dull, dull, dull. Then a few years ago, I put on my favourite music, turned it up loud and cracked on. That made it better. The following year, I added the timer and did an hour at a time. That also made it better because it was only an hour, and I was playing good music and dancing at the same time. Now, I might set the timer for 20 minutes at a time, or just do one part of it (finding the invoices for one aspect of my business for example – like phone bills). Chunking it down like this (plus the loud music) helps me get it done. Usually a whole lot faster than when I tried to do it all in one go and put if off for 6 months!

If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it, delegate it or make it fun!

Are you ready to do it?

If you’re not ready, this is not procrastination…it’s not being ready! I had a client who was ‘procrastinating’ a piece of homework I had set. When we were investigating why, he said he didn’t have a pad to do it in. It wasn’t the homework that was the problem, it was the lack of the right equipment! As soon as he get the pad, he did the homework. (it’s amazing how often ‘little’ things like this get in the way…and while you’re busy blaming yourself for procrastination, you’re missing that you need something to get ready!) Whenever I’ve done website updates, I’ve ‘procrastinated’ for months, because I’m ruminating, I’m mulling, I’m pondering what exactly I want to say…I’m not procrastinating, I’m just not ready to take action. This procrastination saved me hours of wasted work – if I’d just ‘made’ myself get on with it, I’d have had to change the website again 2 months later when I’d decided what I wanted to say!

If you’re not ready, get ready!

Is there a better way to do it?

I had a client who had some sales calls to make, and was ‘procrastinating’ – I ran him through this checklist…do you want to do it? Yes. Are you ready? Yes. Is there a better way? Yes! It turned out that 3 of the 50 people on his list hated to be sold to by phone…so for them, the better way was to set up a face to face meeting. Here’s what cracks me up though: he was so busy beating himself up for procrastinating, he had put off all 50 calls because of 3 that had a better way. As soon as we identified that better way for those 3, he made the other calls. It can be that simple when you realise that procrastination itself is just the symptom of a deeper issue and look for that issue!

If there’s a better way, do it that way!

Do you know what to do?

Again, this makes me laugh, because if you don’t know exactly what to do, how are you expecting to do it? I have had this conversation a lot with clients who are working on websites. And they’re ‘procrastinating’…only they’re not procrastinating, they just have no idea what to do! I’m a big supporter of the ‘baby step’ – a next step that can be taken in about 10 minutes. It’s hard to procrastinate teeny tiny baby steps, because they’re clear and easy. So if you don’t know what to do, your only task is to find out! Your baby step might be ‘ask a friend’ or ‘google it’ or ‘sit and brainstorm for 10 minutes’ or ‘pick one thing off my brainstorm list and do that’. Also, this can be a case of not having defined exactly what you’re going to do. I procrastinate a lot at my desk when I haven’t picked a task to do next. So it’s not exactly procrastination, it’s that I haven’t chosen what to do…once I do, I then get it done (or procrastinate for a different reason!).

If you don’t know what to do, you’re not procrastinating, you just need to figure out what to do!

Are you trying to do step 98 before step 1?

On big, ambitious projects, we can easily get ahead of ourselves. For example, worrying about sending a proposal to the publisher before we’ve actually figured out what we want to write about. It’s a beautiful way of tying bricks to your feet and ensuring you can’t move! But it’s not that helpful in getting shit done. Once again, the good old ‘baby step’ comes into its own here. Itty bitty teeny weeny baby steps make life so much easier…and when you start to break it down, you’ll notice that before you can put the headshots on your website you need 1. To get said headshots done; 2. To get jpegs of them; 3. To find out how to upload them. No wonder you’re procrastinating “putting headshots on website”…there’s a load of stuff that needs to happen first! (This is real world example that made me laugh til I hiccupped when we figured out ‘why’ it was being procrastinated on!)

If you’re trying to do step 98 before step 1, break it down, figure out the next teeny tiny baby step, and do that.

Do you know you CAN do it?

Lack of confidence isn’t procrastination, it’s lack of confidence. If you aren’t convinced you can do it, of course you’re going to put it off because no one likes to fail. No one wants to set themselves up to make a total arse of themselves (ok, some brave and hardy souls do, but for the rest of us, it’s a big fat NO!). If you’re unconfident in your ability or in the impossibility of a task, you’ll put it off. It’s human nature. It doesn’t make you a bad person, it makes you normal! I’ve done it, everyone I’ve ever worked with has done it and everyone I know has done it. So, what do you need to do? Increase your confidence, build yourself up, get inspired. Most things we want to do aren’t impossible, and most have been done by normal people just like you. Give yourself a big pep talk, go find other people who’ve done it and get inspired, put your cheerleaders on the case or work on your skills so you KNOW you can do it. (By the way, I’m not talking about taking years to do this, I’m talking about taking action now so you can do it real soon!)

If you’re not sure you can do it build yourself up, get support and get inspired.

Is the timing right to do it?

I deliberately left this one til last, because it’s more often one of the other factors, but sometimes there is an element of ‘Divine Timing’… sometimes things just come together at a certain time, and you find yourself doing something you’ve been putting off for a while. Like the infographic and this article for example. I first wrote this article in 2010 – spookily, I published it on my blog on March 3rd 2010 (shivers) – and since then I’ve sent it to every client I’ve worked with and lots of other people (anyone who mentions procrastination to me gets sent this article!). I’ve also edited it and added to it and I knew it was a mess and needed redoing (for perhaps 3 years!). For at least a year, I have wanted to create the infographic. Today, everything came together – and I have done the infographic and rewritten the article. I knew I could do it, I wasn’t getting ahead of myself, I knew what to do (although some of the infographic skills I’ve only learned recently), there wasn’t a better way, I was ready, and I wanted to…but I didn’t. Until today. And I firmly believe that there’s a reason for that. Maybe today’s the day you really needed to see it? Maybe it’s that now I have everything I needed (that I didn’t know I was missing before)? I may never know, but sometimes it’s just not the time…

If the timing’s not right, relax…you’ll do it when the timing is right!

If you’ve got this far and none of these applied to whatever you’ve been procrastinating about…here’s the last question to ask yourself to figure out what is going on…

What’s stopping you doing this task?

Because I know that you are a brilliant, intuitive, remarkable human…and I also know that procrastination is a symptom, not a cause. So, let’s find the real cause…and you know yourself best, so you know what’s getting in your way. Fix that, and your procrastination will be cured! Occasionally the answer will be ‘nothing’…so if that’s the case you can get on and do it…but more often there is something in the way – find that, and procrastination will not be a problem for you!

Let me know which ’cause’ you found for your procrastination symptoms, and please feel free to share this infographic and article with anyone you know who’s beating themselves up over something that isn’t the real problem!

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