How to overcome procrastination
Even the most productive people could get into a phase of procrastination. It’s a continuous battle against our will to prioritise short term satisfaction over long term gains.
For people who have been always productive, a sudden bout of procrastination is dreadful. This is because of the feeling of inaction, being projected as a personal failure. Specially during a quarantine, where we are locked into a place without that much physical variety, it exacerbate the problem. Also during a period of uncertainty, our innate psychological mechanisms tend to favour the short term essentials than the long term goals which require lengthy sequence of actions with only sparse rewards.
Some recommend doing as much physical work as possible. Gardening is therapeutic, as it is tangible and could see the results easily. Others recommend a system of rewards mechanically devised to self reward once a task is done. This could be something like “I could have that glass of wine, once I finished writing two pages”. But the system itself needs more work and high in fragility.
What had worked for me well, is having a routine and having the routine done mechanistically. Although it take a while to set up a routine, once it is established, it works well because you don’t try to ad lib it. This is somewhat easier while in a lockdown, as there’s not many disruptions presenting themselves. I’ve written about the routine here previously: https://medium.com/@indy9000/how-to-keep-yourself-motivated-during-quarantine-50f80c8ef397
Having a routine could be made a little bit more stable by writing things down in a set of cards and working through each card, one at a time. If you give a reasonable time block for each card, this is more likely to be a success. Why this works is because you follow a simple rule, — one card at a time and more cards you finish, more the sense of accomplishment. It is tangible in terms of a deck of finished cards. Physicality has a large positive psychological effect. Another variation of this method is to have no more than 3–5 items to do in a day, at least to start with. This has the advantage of having the perception of being doable, and less opportunity to overwhelm yourself. But it depends on your personality. Some could get motivated to get started when more things are there to do. They could be prone to procrastinate when there’s only 3 things to do. Pick the strategy that works for your personality.
Some recommend a more forgiving method, where you convince yourself to perform a task for 10 mins, and take a break after 30mins and build up this micro strategy. Forgive yourself for not being as productive as before. Establish a few streaks and accept what it can give you. Most people will recognise that with procrastination, what’s difficult is starting something, and then feeling guilty and the despair resulting from not having the will power to push through. The reluctance to start comes from trying to optimise the effort by doing it later. Our mind is very clever in coming up with excuses for this, as our bodies are biased to conserve energy. Having a simple strategy like, ‘do it for 10mins’, works because it springboards out of inaction, without giving time to think and optimise.
Physical exercise releases the hormones to keep us alert and keeps us in good spirits. Few minutes of morning exercises sets you up for the day. It could be sit ups, push ups, running, walking or something delightful like cleaning the space you live in. During exercise what improves without a doubt is our breathing frequency, which replenishes the cells with oxygen required to produce energy in their mitochondria (See here for details: https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/cell-energy-and-cell-functions-14024533/). This makes you energised for quite sometime after you’re done. The trick is not to completely exhaust yourself. When that happens your body needs to rest for recovery, which makes it counter productive as a productivity strategy. Moderation, like everything in life, is the key.
One of the benefits of procrastination is having a clean house. Amusing as it is, this has a positive effect, i.e. when you have a tidy environment to work in, your mind becomes less uneasy. External mess can lead to internal mess, as the saying goes. Once you get to the rhythm of having order in the space around you, it gives more motivation to create order in your mind as well.
You could also prime yourself for action by having the prep work done prior. For example, if running is your activity prone to procrastination, leave your running kit out in the open where you can’t miss it. If it is writing, have the notes, books and references set, out in the space you do it, the night before. It could also be beneficial to have conversations about what you do with your friends and family, or co-workers.
Summary
- Do physical work or exercise frequently
- Create a routine and practice it for couple of weeks until it becomes normal
- Make a short list of things to do each day
- Prime yourself for action, with subtle hints
What worked best for you?
