Do you postpone working on tasks you know you should be doing? Do you find yourself avoiding certain crucial activities while completing more enjoyable duties with great gusto? Anytime you defer action, you are procrastinating. Read that sentence again. I know that you want to argue with me, but it is true. As Harold Taylor states, "Procrastination is really the intentional and habitual postponement of some important task that should be done now." Enough about what procrastination is, let's talk about how to put-away procrastination once and for all!
As with any other organizing project, it is important to identify nonfunctional organizing habits so they can be replaced with functional ones. In the world of procrastination, this means diagnosing the cause of procrastination. The reason you procrastinate may vary according to the task. Here are just a few reasons why you might postpone an activity:
• Lack of information
• Requires skills you don't have
• Not enjoyable
• Information overload
• Misuse of personal energy cycles
• Perfectionist tendencies
Once you have identified the cause of your procrastination, it is time to determine the best solution for you given what you are able to change and not change about the situation. Let's look at two scenarios to illustrate my point.
Scenario One: In your most recent performance report, your supervisor noted that you are always late with your monthly expense report. If this continues s/he may take corrective action. Reasons you procrastinate may include:
• Forget when it is due.
• Always losing receipts.
• Unfamiliar with the computer program in which you have to submit the report.
• Not enough time.
Assuming that you want to keep your job, let's explore some possible approaches for submitting your expense report in a timely manner. If you always forget the due date, put a reminder in your electronic or paper planner several days in advance of the target date as well as on actual day. You could also leave yourself a voicemail and keep saving it until the cut-off date. If your challenge is losing receipts, you might hire a professional organizer to help you develop a system for retaining and organizing receipts. There are many factors to consider and numerous organizing tools on the market, a professional can assist in finding what works for your personality, needs, and requirements. If you have problems with the computer program you have to use to submit the report, check to see if someone can train you in the program and possibly assist you the next three months until you acclimate to the program. If the busyness of your schedule impacts your ability to complete the report, consider working on it weekly so that you don't have to designate a large period of time all at once to the task. Make sure that you choose a time of the day when you have the most energy so that the report isn't as arduous to complete.
Now that you have discovered the source of your difficulties and identified your options, it is time to act. For the next three months, see if you can submit your expense report on time. If not, what is holding you back? Do you need to re-diagnose? Do you need to select another option or take a different action? Sometimes it takes several tries before you can change a non-functioning habit into a functioning one. Give yourself permission to try different avenues of action before finding the right one for you.
Scenario Two: Each month you disburse several hundred dollars in late fees because you fail to pay your bills on time. You want to tighten your home budget, how should you proceed? Since there are many ways to cut back on spending, the first decision is whether or not paying bills on time is the way that you want to proceed. Sounds silly in a way, but since we are diagnosing, we need to look at the importance of the activity. Other challenges to paying your bills on time may include:
• Lack of organization: no method of monitoring when bills arrive or when they must be paid
• Intensely dislike task
• Tend to do at low energy time
After you acknowledge that bill paying is not an activity that you can drop altogether without severe consequences, it is time to consider some options. One choice is to hire someone to do your personal bookkeeping. If you dislike bill paying, hiring a reasonably priced bookkeeper can save money because you don't pay the late fees. It also saves time and stress! A second option is to hire a professional organizer to help you develop a good paper flow and bill paying system. After you have a workable system, decide to do the activity at one of your high energy times. If you are a morning person, then paying bills at 9:30pm on a Thursday night is not a good idea. You are tired, you are doing something you don't really enjoy, and you are more likely to make mistakes or get frustrated. A third alternative is to establish the paper flow system on your own and then choose the best time of the day and week to complete the task. A fourth option (for some people) is to delegate the task to someone else in the household. After you have tried your new bill paying arrangement for about 30 days, evaluate how it is working. Are all of your bills paid on time, do you need to make small tweaks to your method or do you need to implement another option?
Consider Harold Taylor's words, "...the habit of procrastination, regardless of the results, is self-defeating in the long run. It makes us feel guilty because we realize it's wrong. It's debilitating because we're constantly dreading the task being postponed. We're more tired mentally by not doing something than we would be physically if we were to do it." So instead of combating the mental clutter associated with guilt and dread for undone tasks, empower yourself:
• Identify the top three tasks you procrastinate on a regular basis.
• Choose one and go through the steps: diagnose the reasons for the procrastination, consider all of the options, act on the most appropriate choice, evaluate your success, and make adjustments as needed.
• Once you have established the anti-procrastination habit for that activity, choose the next task and proceed through the steps.
• Recognize that there may be times when you fall back into procrastination. When that happens give yourself permission to start over again without "shoulding" on yourself.
Remember one of Rita Emmet's Laws, "The dread of doing a task uses up more time and energy than doing the task itself." So go forth and procrastinate no more!
