Are you a procrastinator? Do you put off doing stuff? Do you postpone, delay or even avoid tasks or things that need to be done? This can often cause stress, anxiety, worry, and even financial loss and gets in the way of productivity, peace of mind, and even thriving in your work and life.
Behaviors like procrastination often get bad press. Most of us often ask, “what good can possibly come from postponing, delaying or avoiding the stuff we need to get done?” Perhaps you are thinking, “but what if I never get around to balancing my bank statements, finishing that proposal, letting go of relationships that don’t work, or even finishing this article?” Then what?
Well, what if, sometimes, the act of delaying, can actually give us a crucial minute to pause and ask ourselves if the thing we are avoiding needs to be re-considered or given more thought? Putting off doing something because you are distracted, lack focus, or have just developed a habit of avoiding tasks, may have a price. However, there also may be a cost to ignoring a legitimate reason to hesitate or pause.
So how do we differentiate between these two types of procrastination? Well, one type may actually be a warning sign to slow down and assess and the other might just be an unconstructive habit.
NLP, which is short for Neuro Linguistic Programming, offers lots of simple techniques for dealing with procrastination, and it focuses on something called congruence. Being congruent about something, according to NLP research, is being completely certain about what you want to do, when and how you want to do it, and with whom. So, when you arrive at a “congruent” decision, there is no hesitation. You are really clear about what you are doing and you don’t waste time or energy second guessing or re-thinking something.
There are a number of behavioral models developed by social scientists that assess how congruence can give us information about our choices. One way to think about this is to look at tasks or decisions where there was no hestation to get something done or to be involved. Feeling a sense of purpose and focus is also a form of congruence. Many timescongruence also aligns with our own personal values—what’s important to us—and can be seen in our commitment to a task or activity or an individual.
So, begin by noticing your own energy when delaying a task. Is this task congruent with what you enjoy doing in your life? Or does this task actually drain you? When you eliminate what drains you, you make the space for what’s really important.
Here are a few tips and questions to consider when you feel a sense of procrastination coming on.
1. Check your energy. Do you enjoy this task? Does it energize you? If not, consider the time of day when you are trying to complete this task. Choose a part of the day when you have more energy to complete the things that may be energy drains for you.
2. Are you feeling overwhelmed? When we are in a sense of overwhelm, we are not grounded and it is more challenging to focus on what needs to get done. So, plant your feet on the floor and focus on what is happening in real time. Take a moment to focus on the benefits of completing the task you are faced with and visualize actually getting it done. Then begin!
3. Is the task too big or complicated? See if you can break it down into manageable pieces and pick one to begin. If you can’t figure out where to begin, ask a colleague or co-worker for their ideas or suggestions.
4. Set a deadline. Do you have a lot of open-ended tasks with no clear deadlines? This is often a place where we procrastinate the most because there isn’t a sense of urgency. Give yourself a time frame for accomplishing a task and be sure to celebrate your accomplishment.
5. Walk away. If you are spinning and can’t seem to get the focus you need, take a few minutes and walk away. Go for a short walk, drink a glass of water, and then come back to your desk or work area. Changing geography can often be a way to change our focus, offer a new perspective or way of seeing something, and it can help us re-boot when we are feeling stuck.
6. Are you a perfectionist? Does this hold you back from starting a project or completing a task? Think about how this might actually cause additional stress. While it’s great to have high standards, it doesn’t do us much good if we have difficulty completing tasks or assignments. Striving for excellence rather than perfection can shift our focus away from our own abilities and more on the task itself and the value of getting it done.
7. Is your “inner critic” holding you back? Sometimes our own internal dialogue can cause us to delay the start of a project and hold us back from completing it. These pesky gremlin voices can bring up our fear of failure or maybe even our fear of success. So, notice what your own inner critic is saying and how this might be holding you back from starting something.
While old habits can often hold us back from breaking the cycle of procrastination, being aware of what you are avoiding and why and how you do this, can be an important step in breaking the cycle. This allows you to focus on what’s truly important and on the value of getting things done.
--Dawn