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PROCRASTINATION
9 TACTICS TO HELP YOU TO HELP YOURSELF
http://read.plash.in/2015/02/25/heres-procrastinate-10-tactics-will-help-stop-2/
Why you procrastinate?
Before diving into some tactics to stop procrastinating, you should know why you procrastinate in
the first place. According to Pychyl, procrastination is fundamentally a visceral,
emotional reaction to what you have to do.
When you put pressure on yourself to accomplish certain tasks, according to Pychyl you “have this
strong reaction to the task at hand, and so the story of procrastination begins there with what
psychologists call task aversiveness”. The more aversive a task is to you, the more you’ll resist
it, and the more likely you are to procrastinate.
Why you procrastinate?
Pychyl, in his research and during our interview, identified a number of task characteristics
that make you more likely to procrastinate. Tasks that are aversive tend to:
- Be boring
- Be frustrating
- Be difficult
- Lack personal meaning and intrinsic rewards
- Be ambiguous (you don’t know how to do it)
- Be unstructured
- The more negative emotions you show toward a certain task, the more likely you are to
procrastinate, and according to Pychyl, “any of these [characteristics] can do it”
1
Tasks that are aversive are usually a combination of boring,
frustrating, difficult, meaningless, ambiguous, and
unstructured. But by breaking down exactly which of these
attributes an aversive task has, you can take those qualities and turn
them around to make the task more appealing to you.
You make a little game out of it. How can you make this
task more interesting/relevant/engaging to me?
PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS
Flip a task’s characteristics to make it less aversive
2
Whenever you realize that you should be doing something but that you aren’t
(psychologists call this separation between your actions and beliefs cognitive
dissonance), you can respond in one of several ways to feel better about yourself.
In his book, Pychyl identifies a number of unproductive responses people have
when they procrastinate:
Distracting yourself, and thinking about other things
Forgetting what you have to do, either actively or passively (usually for unimportant tasks)
Downplaying the importance of what you have to do
Giving yourself affirmations, focusing on other your values and qualities that will solidify your sense of self
Denying responsibility to distance yourself from what you have to do
Seeking out new information that supports your procrastination (e.g. when you tell yourself you need to have more
information before you get started on something)
Of course, the best possible response to cognitive dissonance is to change your behaviour and get started on
whatever you’re procrastinating on, but that’s often much easier said than done.
To push back against these biases, recognizing them is key.
Then, Tim recommends that you “list the things that you commonly
say or do to justify your procrastination”, and use these biases as
triggers that you should respond to your behaviour differently.
PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS
Know the ways your brain responds to “cognitive dissonance”
3
Limiting how much time you spend on a task makes the task more
fun, more structured, and less frustrating and difficult because
you’ll always be able to see an end in sight.
There are some huge productivity benefits to the idea as well.
When you limit how much time you spend on something instead of
throwing more time at the problem, you force yourself to exert
more energy over less time to get it done, which will make
you a lot more productive.
PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS
Limit how much time you spend on something
4
When you procrastinate “negative self-talk comes out in spades”, which is
completely counterproductive. When I interviewed David Allen, who wrote the
terrific time-management book “Getting Things Done”, one stat he mentioned
still sticks out in my mind: that 80% of the thoughts you say to yourself
in your head are negative. And it’s pretty difficult to procrastinate without
deceiving yourself.
The reason you deceive yourself when you procrastinate is simple: at the same
time that you know you should be doing something, a different part of you is
very much aware that you’re not actually doing it, so you make up a story about
why you’re not getting that thing done.
Be mindful of how kind you are to yourself, and watch out for times when you
try to deceive yourself.
PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS
Be kind to yourself
5
People, as a rule, overestimate how much motivation they
need to do something. After all, usually you just need enough
motivation to get started.
Once we start a task, it is rarely as bad as we think. In fact,
once you get started on something, your “attributions of the task
change”, and what you think about yourself changes, too.
PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS
Just get started
6
When we procrastinate on our goals, we are basically putting off
our lives. Since procrastination is very much an emotional reaction
to what you have to do, activating the rational part of your
brain to identify the costs of procrastinating is a great strategy to
get unstuck.
Make a list of the tasks you’re procrastinating on, and then next
to each of these tasks or goals, note how your
procrastination has affected you in terms of things such as
your happiness, stress, health, finances, relationships, and so on.
PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS
List the costs of procrastinating
7
We are not very good at predicting how we will feel in the future. We are
overly optimistic, and our optimism comes crashing down when tomorrow comes. When
our mood sours, we end up giving in to feel good. We procrastinate. We have the
tendency to treat our future-selves like a complete stranger and that’s why we give future-
self the same kind of load that we’d give a stranger.
The solution to this? Become better friends with future-you. Here are a few ways:
- Create a future memory. Interestingly, research has shown that all it takes to delay
gratification is to imagine your future. This is easy to do–for example, if you’re debating
between writing a work report today or next week, create a future memory by imagining all
you will be able to get done next week if you start the report now.
- Imagine your future self. The more vivid the future feels, the better.
- Send an email to your future self. Seriously, do it. FutureMe.org lets you send an
email to yourself in the future at a date you specify.
- Disconnect from the Internet when you have to get something done.
PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS
Become better friends with future-you
8
Tasks that aren’t clearly defined are ambiguous and often
unstructured, which makes you a lot more likely to procrastinate with
them. The cure? Form implementation intentions for those tasks.
That’s basically just a fancy way of saying that you should make
your tasks more concrete, by thinking about when, where, and
how you’re going to do them.
One of the very first things is start making a more concrete and start
tying it to something in the environment. And so, these are called
implementation intentions. Move from broad goal intentions to
specific implementation intentions. So that’s a cognitive
technique, where you’re going to do some thinking around: “What am
I going to do when?” And that pre-decision is really important.
PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS
Form “implementation intentions”
9
You procrastinate a lot less with meaningful tasks that are intrinsically
rewarding.
Sometimes I would say procrastination is just a symptom
that your life just doesn’t match what you’re interested in
and you’re putting everything off because all of your goals are kind of
falsely internalized and you’ve got no intrinsic motivation in any of this,
and so maybe you should do something else.
In every job there are going to tasks you find aversive, but when you
constantly find yourself procrastinating because your work is aversive,
there may be other jobs that are more aligned to your passions, that
you will be much more motivated and productive in.
PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS
Use procrastination as a sign
you should seek out more meaningful work

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Procrastination - 9 tactics to help you to help yourself

  • 1. PROCRASTINATION 9 TACTICS TO HELP YOU TO HELP YOURSELF http://read.plash.in/2015/02/25/heres-procrastinate-10-tactics-will-help-stop-2/
  • 2. Why you procrastinate? Before diving into some tactics to stop procrastinating, you should know why you procrastinate in the first place. According to Pychyl, procrastination is fundamentally a visceral, emotional reaction to what you have to do. When you put pressure on yourself to accomplish certain tasks, according to Pychyl you “have this strong reaction to the task at hand, and so the story of procrastination begins there with what psychologists call task aversiveness”. The more aversive a task is to you, the more you’ll resist it, and the more likely you are to procrastinate.
  • 3. Why you procrastinate? Pychyl, in his research and during our interview, identified a number of task characteristics that make you more likely to procrastinate. Tasks that are aversive tend to: - Be boring - Be frustrating - Be difficult - Lack personal meaning and intrinsic rewards - Be ambiguous (you don’t know how to do it) - Be unstructured - The more negative emotions you show toward a certain task, the more likely you are to procrastinate, and according to Pychyl, “any of these [characteristics] can do it”
  • 4. 1 Tasks that are aversive are usually a combination of boring, frustrating, difficult, meaningless, ambiguous, and unstructured. But by breaking down exactly which of these attributes an aversive task has, you can take those qualities and turn them around to make the task more appealing to you. You make a little game out of it. How can you make this task more interesting/relevant/engaging to me? PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS Flip a task’s characteristics to make it less aversive
  • 5. 2 Whenever you realize that you should be doing something but that you aren’t (psychologists call this separation between your actions and beliefs cognitive dissonance), you can respond in one of several ways to feel better about yourself. In his book, Pychyl identifies a number of unproductive responses people have when they procrastinate: Distracting yourself, and thinking about other things Forgetting what you have to do, either actively or passively (usually for unimportant tasks) Downplaying the importance of what you have to do Giving yourself affirmations, focusing on other your values and qualities that will solidify your sense of self Denying responsibility to distance yourself from what you have to do Seeking out new information that supports your procrastination (e.g. when you tell yourself you need to have more information before you get started on something) Of course, the best possible response to cognitive dissonance is to change your behaviour and get started on whatever you’re procrastinating on, but that’s often much easier said than done. To push back against these biases, recognizing them is key. Then, Tim recommends that you “list the things that you commonly say or do to justify your procrastination”, and use these biases as triggers that you should respond to your behaviour differently. PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS Know the ways your brain responds to “cognitive dissonance”
  • 6. 3 Limiting how much time you spend on a task makes the task more fun, more structured, and less frustrating and difficult because you’ll always be able to see an end in sight. There are some huge productivity benefits to the idea as well. When you limit how much time you spend on something instead of throwing more time at the problem, you force yourself to exert more energy over less time to get it done, which will make you a lot more productive. PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS Limit how much time you spend on something
  • 7. 4 When you procrastinate “negative self-talk comes out in spades”, which is completely counterproductive. When I interviewed David Allen, who wrote the terrific time-management book “Getting Things Done”, one stat he mentioned still sticks out in my mind: that 80% of the thoughts you say to yourself in your head are negative. And it’s pretty difficult to procrastinate without deceiving yourself. The reason you deceive yourself when you procrastinate is simple: at the same time that you know you should be doing something, a different part of you is very much aware that you’re not actually doing it, so you make up a story about why you’re not getting that thing done. Be mindful of how kind you are to yourself, and watch out for times when you try to deceive yourself. PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS Be kind to yourself
  • 8. 5 People, as a rule, overestimate how much motivation they need to do something. After all, usually you just need enough motivation to get started. Once we start a task, it is rarely as bad as we think. In fact, once you get started on something, your “attributions of the task change”, and what you think about yourself changes, too. PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS Just get started
  • 9. 6 When we procrastinate on our goals, we are basically putting off our lives. Since procrastination is very much an emotional reaction to what you have to do, activating the rational part of your brain to identify the costs of procrastinating is a great strategy to get unstuck. Make a list of the tasks you’re procrastinating on, and then next to each of these tasks or goals, note how your procrastination has affected you in terms of things such as your happiness, stress, health, finances, relationships, and so on. PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS List the costs of procrastinating
  • 10. 7 We are not very good at predicting how we will feel in the future. We are overly optimistic, and our optimism comes crashing down when tomorrow comes. When our mood sours, we end up giving in to feel good. We procrastinate. We have the tendency to treat our future-selves like a complete stranger and that’s why we give future- self the same kind of load that we’d give a stranger. The solution to this? Become better friends with future-you. Here are a few ways: - Create a future memory. Interestingly, research has shown that all it takes to delay gratification is to imagine your future. This is easy to do–for example, if you’re debating between writing a work report today or next week, create a future memory by imagining all you will be able to get done next week if you start the report now. - Imagine your future self. The more vivid the future feels, the better. - Send an email to your future self. Seriously, do it. FutureMe.org lets you send an email to yourself in the future at a date you specify. - Disconnect from the Internet when you have to get something done. PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS Become better friends with future-you
  • 11. 8 Tasks that aren’t clearly defined are ambiguous and often unstructured, which makes you a lot more likely to procrastinate with them. The cure? Form implementation intentions for those tasks. That’s basically just a fancy way of saying that you should make your tasks more concrete, by thinking about when, where, and how you’re going to do them. One of the very first things is start making a more concrete and start tying it to something in the environment. And so, these are called implementation intentions. Move from broad goal intentions to specific implementation intentions. So that’s a cognitive technique, where you’re going to do some thinking around: “What am I going to do when?” And that pre-decision is really important. PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS Form “implementation intentions”
  • 12. 9 You procrastinate a lot less with meaningful tasks that are intrinsically rewarding. Sometimes I would say procrastination is just a symptom that your life just doesn’t match what you’re interested in and you’re putting everything off because all of your goals are kind of falsely internalized and you’ve got no intrinsic motivation in any of this, and so maybe you should do something else. In every job there are going to tasks you find aversive, but when you constantly find yourself procrastinating because your work is aversive, there may be other jobs that are more aligned to your passions, that you will be much more motivated and productive in. PROCRASTINATION - TACTICS Use procrastination as a sign you should seek out more meaningful work