Do you keep putting things off, promising to do them later but when later arrives, you feel the overwhelming urge to procrastinate? You’re not alone. Procrastination is incredibly common, but often misunderstood. Procrastination is often accompanied by a lot of shame. It makes us feel guilty, lazy or unorganized but the reality is, procrastination has less to do with bad time keeping or laziness, and much more to do with how our brain works.
Why do we procrastinate?
Essentially, procrastination is an emotion regulation issue. It isn’t a unique character flaw or a sign of incompetence. It is our brain’s way of avoiding and coping with negative emotions, which are associated with the tasks we put off. Certain tasks may make us feel bored, anxious, insecure, frustrated or resentful. It may be something unpleasant about the task itself, such as cleaning dirty things which we find disgusting or a boring admin task that requires a lot of concentration. The tricky thing is, procrastination is often a cycle and it can be difficult to change a long established pattern of emotions. Meaning the more we procrastinate on a certain task, the more it becomes an issue. When we put off a task, we relieve our brain from the negative feelings associated with the task – almost like a reward. We feel rewarded when we put something off but feeding our reward system is how we build habits.
How can we prevent procrastination?
The first step to battling your procrastination cycle is to detangle and review your emotions when they arise from a specific task. When you feel the urge to do something else other than what you planned, ask yourself what’s stopping you from doing it. Label it. Is it boredom? Anxiety? Are you overwhelmed by the task? Do you feel as though you can’t do it? Once you identify the negative emotion, think about how you can combat that specific emotion. For example, when a task is boring, try scheduling a reward for completing it. Alternatively, you can find a way to make the task less boring. For example, if you’ve been putting off cleaning the kitchen, try putting on a podcast in the kitchen or some music. This will help kickstart some feel good chemicals to get you going, whilst keeping your hands free to clean.
When you feel overwhelmed by a task because you’re not sure how to do it, try breaking the task down into smaller, more manageable tasks and researching how to do it, either online or finding someone you can ask. Even if you’re not sure someone will 100% know how to complete it, just talking the task through with someone can help us understand it better and improve how we feel about it. Alternatively,they may know someone who will know how to do it. Finding out how to do the task is the first step to completing it.
If you feel overwhelmed by the sheer length of the task, try using a timer and a reward. Give yourself a smaller goal of working on the task for 20 mins, once the 20 mins is up, you can take a break and do something relaxing. You may find that you want to keep going anyway because you’ve gotten into the groove of it.
When a task makes you feel resentful or irritated, try and think about what value it brings to you. You may hate cleaning your room but you value the calming feeling of having a clean clutter free space. If you do complete a task you’d been putting off, try taking a photo or recording a voice note to yourself about it once you’ve done it. Record yourself saying aloud how you feel once the task is done. Then when you schedule time to do it again in the future, listen back to the voice note or look at the photo and take in that reassurance from yourself that you are capable of doing it and remember the rewarding feeling that comes along with it.