The Key to Overcoming Procrastination
For many people, overcoming procrastination is one of their most difficult challenges. It’s something that they struggle with all their lives. They never seem to get on top of it and hardly any of them know why.
In this brief article, I hope to show you what I think may be the key to overcoming procrastination.
Is procrastination a bad thing?
You see, putting things off until later is not necessarily a bad thing. That’s where it’s so easy to get hung up. You think that because you’re not doing whatever it is that you think you should, or because you’d rather do something else instead, that you lack discipline or that you’re just lazy. And no matter how hard you try, the problem doesn’t seem to go away.
You feel as though you’re stuck on the circular treadmill, and you can’t get off.
Maybe you make New Year’s resolutions. Maybe you make Monday resolutions.
But no matter what you do, you can’t seem to change your behavior.
Now what we have to do is to get behind what you do and look at why you do it.
What is the real reason for procrastination? What is really preventing you from doing what you think you should do?
Examples
I love examples. They have the power to illustrate a truth that theory can only describe. I learned this from one of my students when I used to teach in the MBA program of a university. There was one student that constantly asked me for an example, and because I was stuck in the world of theories, I had to really think hard to answer her questions. But it was one of the best experiences I could have had.
So here’s an example.
Pain
Do you like pain? Probably not.
It’s something you try to avoid, right? Isn’t avoidance a kind of procrastination?
You think to yourself, “I don’t want to hurt today.” That’s not to say that you want to hurt tomorrow; only that you don’t want to experience it now.
Pain, however, can be a benefit. It tells us that there’s a problem.
When there’s no pain, you assume that everything is okay. When something hurts, you stop for a moment to see if you can figure out what the cause is. Why? Because you don’t want to hurt.
So pain can cause you to stop – to put off what you’re doing – in order to help you to discover what is causing it.
What you do about it is a separate issue. The main thing is that pain gets you to stop.
Hunger
Hunger is another good example. It’s normal to get hungry. When you don’t, then you have to look for the underlying reasons.
Clinical depression, for example, can suppress appetite unnaturally. So can various physical illnesses.
What I’m saying is that when you are yourself – that is, feeling normal – there are some things you will want to do, and other things that you won’t.
But here’s an important point: When you’re making an effort to do something that you want to do, but find that you keep putting off something in it that you think you should do, then it’s important to look more closely to see what the underlying reasons might be.
In fact, your success at overcoming procrastination is dependent on your ability to figure this out.
Why do you procrastinate?
Probably the biggest reason why you put things off is because doing them is inconsistent with what you really want to do.
Let’s look at an example.
Example – vocation
Suppose that you have decided that you want to pursue a particular vocation. It can be anything. It could be sports, music, art, computer programming, engineering, driving a truck, becoming President of the United States or the Prime Minister of your country.
Pick anything you like.
Whatever it is that you’re trying to do, when you look back over the past months or even years, you can see how you have failed to make any really progress. And the thing is that at almost every step of the way, you have what you believe is a good explanation for why that is the case.
In other words, it’s not as though you’ve been lazy. You’ve been working; just on other things.
So you have to think about why that is.
Why is it that something that is as important as you make it out to be isn’t important enough to take precedence over all the other things that you did instead?
That is a vital question. Go back and reread it, and then let it sink in for a moment.
Multitude of parts
All vocations are made up of a variety of skills. And herein lies the underlying problem. Some of those skills may interest you a great deal, while others may make you ill just to think about them.
Suppose you want to become a professional athlete, musician, or artist. What do you have to do?
Most people who become world-class start when they are very young. Five or six years old is not uncommon. I think that Tiger Woods was given his first golf club when he was three.
Now you may not have been given that “advantage.” It could be that you are in your 20s or 30s or even older. And that being the case, you need to recognize that you may have certain physical limitations that will prevent you from fully realizing the goal that you’ve set for yourself.
But that’s no reason to give up. It simply means that you have to set your sights a little differently.
I heard Leslie Garrett, the British opera singer say the other day that it was never too late to start singing in that genre. She’s right.
She didn’t mean that if you start when you’re 50, that you’ll be able to debut with the Metropolitan Opera when you’re 51. She meant that if you work at it, that you’ll be able to enjoy what you do regardless of your age and that you’ll get better at it with practice.
Back to our example.
There’s a technical side to all professions. To get really good in engineering or computer programming, for example, you also need to develop your mathematical abilities.
It’s not enough to be interested in fixing things.
Just because you can take a car engine apart and put it back together, or like Lego doesn’t mean that you can rely on those propensities to make you successful in these vocations. These things may be an indication of some natural ability and interest, but by themselves they will only ever give you a hobby.
So maybe you’re beginning to see that the key to overcoming procrastination lies in a determined effort to work on all of the things that are needed to become successful in whatever it is that you want to do.
And for many people, it’s that which they dislike that prevents them from accomplishing the thing they say they want to do.
How does that happen? Instead of working on what needs to be done, they only work on what they like. The other things that are just as important, if not more so, are ignored.
Let’s go back to the golf example. There’s a saying: Drive for show; putt for dough.
You can drive the ball from the tee to the green in one shot for every hole you play on every course in the world; but if you can’t put that ball in the hole, then you’ll never earn any money from the game.
So what would you think of a someone who wanted to be a professional golfer, but who only practiced on the driving range? Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?
What’s the answer?
So what’s the answer? It’s that you need to dissect whatever it is that you want to do into its component parts, and then to honestly ask yourself if you enjoy or at least are determined to do all of them.
Example – Writing
Let me give you an example that’s close to my heart: Writing. I love to do it and I get paid for it as well.
What skills do you need to be a successful writer?
You have to be able to think logically; to build an argument.
You have to be able to spell.
You have to have an understanding of grammar. I’ve been affectionately accused of being a member of the “grammar police.”
If you want to become a writer because you love to tell stories, but hate grammar and can’t spell, then you need to either improve your skills or find something else to do.
I’ve seen copy where the editor didn’t do his or her job properly. It was a mess. It reflected badly on the author, and I found it unbelievable that the writer himself didn’t know that his dialogue was stilted, his descriptions untenable, and his grammar – yes, his grammar – incorrect.
And don’t get me started on those who’ve said that they always wanted to write a book. I’ve lost track of the number of people who have said that to me.
I’ll say it right here. I’m willing to help anyone write a book for free. I’ll give you the advice, and you’ll do all the work. That doesn’t mean that I’ll spend copious amounts of time reading manuscripts or teaching you how to write. Only you can learn how to write.
Writers write. Plain and simple. If you want to be a writer, then you have to write.
You have to just do it.
But if you want to write a book, then I’ll coach you on how to do it, step by step. And by the way, the publisher will be Amazon Kindle. I won’t get any royalties. It’s just the most sensible platform for writing books at the moment.
You’ll have to figure out how to format it for that platform. That’s all part of learning how to write a book.
Forget traditional publishers. You do all the work, and they get all the money. Trust me. I know.
Deliberate practice
If you want to be a professional musician but hate practicing, then you need to recognize that there isn’t a single person who has ever lived who has been able to do that, and you won’t be the exception.
It takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become world class, and the kids who started when they were five or six have put in the much time by the age of 15 or 16.
You can reach that magic number, too, if you’re willing to spend four hours per day, five days per week for 10 years. But that’s what is required.
If you can’t practice four hours per day, then maybe you can only do two. Then it might take 20 years instead of 10. That’s why you see people starting to really mature in their jobs in their 40s or 50s. By then, they’ve reached mastery. But they worked at all the parts to get them there.
What is “deliberate practice?”
If you’ve ever attended a music recital given by students of a variety of ages by a local teacher, then what I’m about to describe will sound familiar. You may even know someone for whom this is true.
Typically, the youngest students will play their pieces pretty well except for one spot. They always stumble over it.
If you watch the parents, then you can almost predict when it will happen by looking at their faces. They have the look of hope that maybe, just maybe, their kid won’t fluff this spot this time; and then when he or she does fluff it, they give a resigned look to their spouse, partner, or the person beside them that says, “This always happens.”
We applaud the children for their effort, as we should. They’re probably embarrassed enough as it is.
But what happened during their practice sessions? The answer is simple. They spent most of their time on the easy parts; but when they came to the hard one – the one they stumbled over – they skipped it because it was hard. And so each time they practiced they in effect practiced the mistake.
Deliberate practice means spending time on the hard parts. Did you get that?
It means spending 10,000 hours on the hardest tasks. That’s why you have to love it. No one would spend that kind of time on something they hated. You wouldn’t, and you don’t.
The thing is that playing or performing the easy parts won’t ever be a problem. These things will take care of themselves. You have to put the time you have in on the hard parts.
That’s how you make progress.
What does this have to do with overcoming procrastination?
So you’re probably wondering what this has to do with overcoming procrastination. It’s simply this: If you find yourself avoiding a particular task, it could be that the goal that you’ve been trying to reach really isn’t for you.
It could be that in order to be successful at A, you have to be competent, not only in B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J, but also in K, and you hate K.
That means that if you find that you’re unwilling to put your effort into what’s is most difficult for you – in other words that you keep procrastinating – then it’s likely that you’re pursuing the wrong goal.
If success at A means that you have to spend time and effort on B through K and any one of those parts you habitually put off, for whatever reason, then you need to take a fresh look – an objective look – at what it is that you really want to do.
A good place to start is by looking at what you naturally gravitate towards. But we’ll save that for another article.