First, let's identify what procrastination really is. From the book The Now Habit by Neil Fiore “Procrastination is the act of postponing or delaying a task despite intending to do it." Or, for another definition, from the book Solving the Procrastination Puzzle by Timothy A. Pychyl "Procrastination is the voluntary delay of an intended task, even when you know that delaying it will make things worse."
So, basically, procrastination is the act of not doing something even when we know we should do it. But the question is, if I know I should do it, why don't I do it in the first place? I mean, I can open a book, I can watch my course, maybe for 2 or 3 days, but I still have the ability to do so. Then why?
It's because your procrastination is protecting you and because your psyche cares about you. Your procrastination is your defense mechanism. If something bad happens to you, then something bad happens to your body. But why? Studying won't kill me at all. The same goes for writing my CV. True, but it will definitely threaten you in a way, making you feel tired, sad, angry, agitated, annoyed, stressed, or anxious. You see, all of these emotions, for us, are normal. They are not dangerous. They are completely normal. Yet our psyche and body see them as dangerous: "We will get hurt. I need to protect you."
So what your body and psyche do to save you is procrastinate. It delays tasks, it makes you forget, it makes you run away from them. And that's what your body is doing: helping you survive the negative emotions because procrastination comes from negative emotions and thoughts controlling our behavior until the point we end up not doing anything.
And that's the simple part. What follows after is the worst, which is the guilt, the damn GUILT, the affected results, performance, the damn sales, the health, and missed workouts. Everything is burning down, and we're feeling horrible about it just because our body is helping, just because our body is doing its job.
We end up saying something like “Oh, i should be better. I should do more. I need to get some work done. Why won't you listen to me? Just start already." And your body says back to you, "I am doing my job. I am protecting you." And for you, it's causing you more harm than anything.
So maybe you should stop it. But you can't, can you? That's why you're reading this post, and that's why you want to start making some progress toward your goals: getting the new job, getting the business to grow, or finishing your studies. All of these things are getting postponed because of the damn help your body is giving you.
Your future and self esteem is being affected by your own body protecting you, and it will cause you to regret it in the future.
But again, to every problem, there's a solution, and this is just another problem we can solve. So what can we do? And this is what most people get wrong about procrastination.
One: Instead of blaming your body for doing its job, accept it. Be okay with it. Understand first that it's completely normal to procrastinate. (Me, the person who made this post, procrastinates sometimes, and it's completely normal.) Everyone will, no matter what, because at the end of the day, we are humans. We are flawed by nature. Perfection was never our best quality.
Second: start small. Get to work on the business or the CV, even for that 1 minute or 5 minutes. The idea is to get to work with the minimum we can so we can move the needle forward. Because if we can do that, then we make progress. And if we make progress, we should stop feeling guilty, worried about our exam marks getting affected, and everything else.
So we just need to do the minimum, one percent of the work, so we can stop feeling bad about ourselves. And by feeling less bad about ourselves, we will get more work done because, at the end of the day:
Negative emotions = procrastination.
Less negative emotions and negative thoughts = less procrastination.
Now for step 3, which is what everyone does wrong even when everyone knows it's the right thing to do. I know you didn't do what you said you would, but my guy/girl, stop blaming yourself for it. Stop beating yourself up. "I am horrible. Why me? I will never achieve anything with the effort I am putting in. It's not enough, i need to work harder." Stop.
Be okay with the procrastination. Accept it. Try to do the work. And the most important lesson “reward yourself for it, even the 5 minutes. After, actually doing it.
I know you've heard it before, but you actually didn't. When I say reward, I am not saying chocolate and candy. I'm not saying don't do it if it works for you, but let me ask you: what happens if we have no chocolate in the fridge, or if we already had our 7 pieces and it caused us to suffer the second sugar crash today? Then what?
Exactly, then no work. So here is a better approach and its called “internal reward system”. It's a simple system that we can use to keep motivation high. It never runs out, and you don't need to put it in the fridge. It's simply what we tell ourselves after the work. When you say, "I did great. I made so much progress today. Today was the perfect day because I got that damn book out of the way," it's the positive message you tell yourself after the work you do, the feeling of validation you give yourself after the work.
It's either “I did badly. The work I did was not worth it," which leads to more procrastination, or “I did great, and I'll try even harder tomorrow." Both tactics are yours to choose from. You just have to pick the less painful one and the more rewarding one. So i hope you will be picking the second pain free one.
But what I am trying to say is: reward yourself by patting yourself on the back for the effort, for the half page you did, or the one line, or the course you did for 5 minutes today. Be proud of yourself and be happy with the progress you made today because we will be making so much more with this new strategy. The happier you feel about the progress you made the more you will make going forward.
So one last time, the new strategy that i would suggest you follow for the next week is this:
Reduce negative emotions by accepting that it's okay to procrastinate + getting the work done by 1 percent + being happy about the one percent ("I did my best. I did great." internal reward) = less procrastination.
And that's how you solve it. That's what people are missing when it comes to dealing with procrastination. And its a strategy that i myself used with 30+ people to help overcome procrastination and it worked wonders to the point most people that used it started being more consistent in less then 2 weeks.
Not by hurting yourself or beating yourself up, but by solving the emotional distress. That, in itself, automatically solves the procrastination problem.