Contents
Trying to stop procrastinating becomes a means of procrastination. Before introducing another time management system and calling on willpower to help, you need to understand the reasons.
The overseas word “procrastination” appeared in the Russian language at the end of the XNUMXth century, and came into use at the beginning of this millennium. No wonder: people have finally found a definition for the daily postponing of things for later. Procrastination has become a fashionable disease. There is a diagnosis – over time there will be a treatment. Time did not live up to expectations.
The Internet is full of articles and videos on how to defeat the disease, but the effect of them is doubtful. Universal advice does not work because procrastination is too vague a concept. Instead of trying to defeat a mythical enemy, it’s better to find out precisely what is wrong with you.
The Root of Procrastination
Procrastination is often confused with laziness. A hallmark of procrastination is guilt. A person who is lazy does it with pleasure. A procrastinating person does not really work and does not rest. He constantly torments himself with self-criticism and derogatory thoughts.
There are different theories about the causes of procrastination, but they all boil down to one thing – it is associated with internal anxiety and fears. In 1982, Laura J. Solomon and Esther D. Rothblum of the University of Vermont studied the causes of procrastination among college students. Research has shown that fear of failure drives procrastination. It is generated by anxiety about not meeting other people’s expectations or one’s own high standards and lack of self-confidence. Flexible Mind author Carol Dweck argues that people with the fixed mindset have a fear of failure. Adherents of this mindset believe that abilities are either innate or not—we can’t control that. A non-standard task causes them anxiety, as it threatens their self-esteem.
“If I fail at this task, everyone will understand that I am good for nothing,” is a typical reasoning of a person with a fixed mindset. The opposite of the fixed mindset is the growth mindset. People with a growth mindset take on challenging tasks with interest and enthusiasm. They see an opportunity to develop existing skills or learn new ones. When they fail, growth mindsets don’t give up, they try again and again until they succeed. A fixed or growth mindset is shaped by the environment at an early age.
Carol Dweck noticed that some kids are happy to take on complex puzzles, while others prefer simple tasks. One and the same person can be the bearer of different attitudes depending on specific aspects of the personality. A high school student may have a growth mindset for intelligence, but a fixed mindset for creativity and personality.
It is not easy to change the mindset and get rid of the fear of failure. Moreover, most of us do not even suspect this deep fear. Outwardly successful and organized people also put off important things because of fear of failure. We do not realize that we are afraid. We just feel that something is wrong. It’s time to figure out what symptoms hide the fear of failure.
Eternal deadline
It’s hard to imagine a world without deadlines. They help structure and order life. Many people hate deadlines, but willingly set them. In 2002, the journal Psychological Science published the results of a study conducted by Klaus Wertenbroch and Dan Arielly at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Students were asked to set their own deadlines for submitting three papers during the semester. 27% of participants set a deadline for all assignments at the same latest date. The rest of the students distributed the deadlines by semester. The majority did not fail – in comparison with the first group, the quality of their work turned out to be higher, and there were fewer deadline violations. Deadlines temporarily help you work more efficiently, but in the long run they are addictive and have the opposite effect.
Everyone had to finish the work on the last night before handing over. The reason could be objective: the disease disabled or let down colleagues by not providing the necessary information in a timely manner. You mobilize the forces of the body and almost miraculously hand over the work on time. Consciously, you promise yourself that this will not happen again. But at the physiological level, the body draws completely different conclusions: thanks to a surge of adrenaline, you coped with the work in record time, and the quality turned out to be acceptable. The body discovers a great way to conserve energy.
This dependence is formed in the student years. We are moving from daily school assignments to large papers that must be turned in during the semester. Also, dependence on the deadline is typical for workers in creative fields and other areas where activities take place in the “fire-fire!” mode. A person accustomed to adrenaline stimulation cannot act until a deadline is on the horizon. But not everything in life needs to be brought to a deadline. It is important to deal with health while it is not completely lost, and it is better to learn a foreign language in advance, and not at night on the eve of an interview in a foreign company.
Deadline addiction is treated the same way as any other addiction – rehab. It’s a long and painstaking process—getting used to doing the work in advance in small steps and be sure to reward yourself for small successes. Report to the client two hours early and leave work on time. Get your paperwork in order before the check comes and give yourself a day off.
Perfectionism
Perfectionism is usually attributed to creative people. In fact, perfectionism can stall the affairs of any employee. Among the characteristics of a perfectionist are an unrealistic idea of success, self-flagellation due to failure, dependence on external evaluations, and excessive self-identification with work.
A typical example of a perfectionist is a graduate student who expects to write a dissertation while maintaining her usual work schedule, the amount of household chores, and the frequency of classes with children. Reducing your workload in any of these areas seems like weakness and a sign of laziness. Moreover, if the finished dissertation does not revolutionize science, the perfectionist will conclude that she has not realized her potential. Underworked.
Perfectionists claim that they simply have high standards. The problem is that their standards are not “just high” but unattainable. An aspiring writer plans to write twenty pages of text in a day, when his usual daily productivity falls short of five pages.
Sky-high goals cannot be achieved, and the perfectionist hangs labels on himself – lazy, disorganized, incompetent. This increases anxiety about possible failure and stimulates procrastination.
Write Professionally, author Hillary Rettig, suggests overcoming perfectionism with an attitude of friendly objectivity. Friendly objectivity implies that you see reality clearly – with all the complexities and nuances, and treat your work with great attention and understanding. A person who practices friendly objectivity gets rid of the illusions of perfectionism. Through this, he is able to set achievable goals, rely on internal rewards instead of external recognition, and develop a more mature attitude towards success and failure.
Decision paralysis
The world opens up so many opportunities for us that our eyes run wide. I would like to become an astronaut, a ballerina and a Nobel laureate in physics all rolled into one. We don’t know what to grab.
Financial analyst Masha comes home and tries to decide what to do in the evening after a day’s work. Masha is tired of numbers and analytics, she wants to look out the window and draw watercolors in the album. On the other hand, Masha understands that she needs to figure out the calculation algorithms for a new software product that has recently been introduced in the company. There is no time for this at work.
Masha is torn between what she wants and what is right. As a result, Masha is not engaged in either one or the other – she spends the whole evening in meaningless surfing on information sites and social networks. Masha was overcome by decision paralysis. Thinking about options exhausted her cognitive resource, and Masha preferred not to decide anything at all.
Author of the book Beat Procrastination! Petr Ludwig suggests presenting all available possibilities in the form of scissors. It seems to us that the diversity of opportunities makes us happier. But the opposite happens: the more options, the more difficult it is to choose one thing, the wider the scissor blades open. Even after making a decision, doubts and regrets can overcome us – we begin to wonder what would have happened if we had chosen another option.
To overcome such obstacles, Ludwig suggests turning to personal vision. A personal vision helps you prioritize your life and stop being torn between a thousand possibilities. If Masha puts a career at the forefront, then without regret she does work in her free time. If creative realization is a priority, Masha draws in the evenings and is not offended when someone else gets a promotion.
Read more:
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- Start yourself from scratch
Eternal student complex
Doing something for the first time is always exciting. Suddenly the process does not go according to plan, and we do not have the experience to properly handle the situation. We imagine the most terrible outcome and come to the conclusion that it is better not to get involved at all.
A music college student wants to earn extra money with private guitar lessons, but he feels that he himself is not playing virtuoso enough. The sales manager dreams of making short films, but is afraid that without a professional education he will not succeed. The marketer is about to open a small business specializing in market research, but he constantly puts it off – he needs to earn some more money and gain experience.
The student, manager, and marketer feel they are not yet ready to start a new business. So it is, not because of a lack of necessary skills, but because of imaginary obstacles. They create a mental maze from which it is impossible to get out. However, real difficulties, unlike fictional ones, can be overcome.
The author of the book “What to dream” Barbara Sher suggests that we stop theorizing and move on to action. Even a small practical step will give more confidence and awareness than thought experiments. Barbara’s principle is simple: do it before you’re ready. You can’t learn to swim without getting your feet wet. In the same way, in theory, it will not be possible to master a foreign language or write a book. It will not be possible to start “fully armed”, because most of the knowledge can only be learned from practice.
Muse waiting
It is a pleasure to work on our own project: we are not imposed deadlines and content requirements, we can reveal our potential and realize our plans exactly the way we want. But this is a trap – in the absence of an external control system, we wait for ideal circumstances to get started. One of the elements of the ideal set is inspiration. It seems that one day it will flood, and we will do the job quickly, easily and with pleasure. It won’t.
Spontaneity is a mask behind which procrastination is hidden. When deciding what to do, we have to choose between instant gratification or delayed gratification. Eat an apple or a chocolate bar, go for a run or lie on the couch, read professional literature or scroll through the news feed on social networks. The question is not that eating apples is good and chocolate is bad. The problem is in the inconsistency of solutions. Yesterday you decided to take up education and study at Coursera every evening. Today, instead, you watch TV shows until you lose your pulse, that is, you act directly opposite to yesterday’s decision. Before going to bed, guilt overtakes you – you again become an adherent of the decision “you need to take up your mind.”
The further the reward is delayed, the more rapidly its value decreases. That’s why it’s so easy to opt for short-term weaknesses: immediate rewards, such as the pleasure of eating a chocolate bar, overshadow the big but far-reaching benefits of proper nutrition. When we consider a new project, the benefits are huge—profit growth, customer base expansion, expansion into new markets—and the costs are small relative to the expected results.
We must admit that the ideal moment will not come. Free time, good mood, distraction-free work environment, flow of inspiration and creative ideas come together only in your imagination. If you’re serious about taking on a project, you need to schedule it systematically, just like we schedule business meetings and meetings.
Healing
Procrastination reduces the quality of life. Missed deadlines, broken promises, missed opportunities, and missed goals are all detrimental, personally and professionally. Neil Fiore, author of The Easy Way to Stop Procrastinating, notes that some procrastinators manage to turn in things on time, but feel exhausted and dissatisfied with the result. A person suffering from procrastination is unable to enjoy life and fulfill their potential.
Break free from the bondage of deadlines. Allow more time for the project than is actually required. If there is a flood, fire or other disaster, you will have time to complete the work at a normal pace. Reward yourself for each stage of work completed with a margin of time.
Get rid of the inner critic. Perfectionism is the killer of all undertakings and creative decisions. You will not begin to truly work fruitfully until you get rid of self-flagellation.
Choose priority areas. It is pointless to spend energy scrolling through all possible scenarios in your head. Decide on key areas of activity and focus on them.
Start before you’re ready. It is impossible to achieve mastery in any area by talking about it in theory. Take the first step towards practice. Your view of the business can change drastically.
Don’t wait for inspiration. Make a schedule, make appointments in advance, structure your day. If a brilliant idea strikes you in the middle of the night, great! But in anticipation of such an idea, you can lose valuable days, weeks, and even years.
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