The 1# Strategy To Defeat Procrastination

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By Daniel Robledo| Last Updated May 24, 2020 

I will do it later

You just got another assignment to do, the deadline is far away and you think: “I will do it later for sure”
 
But then you don’t.
 
You sit down to get that work done and before you realize it has been 15 minutes and you haven’t even started.
 
You start to feel anxious and frustrated, “I should have started sooner”, you say, “What have I been doing all of this time?“, you ask.
 
If you are anything like me, this happens to you more than often, and we both know what we have been doing, we have been procrastinating.
 
We all dream of having more free time and one of the main things that prevent us from reaching that dream is procrastination.
 
Image if whenever you have to do something, you doing it right away. Can you imagine the tremendous amount of more free time you would have?
 

The solution you have been looking for

I have good news for you, even if procrastination is one of the biggest problems in human society, it can be solved.
 
You just need to know-how.
 
And that is exactly what we are going to do today.
 
We are going to learn what is procrastination, why does it appear in the first place, and how to completely overcome it.
 
I can promise you that if you work on all of the tips and strategies I am going to show you today, you are going to see results in no time, and those results won’t be small, I promise.
 
Every back and then I like to track my time to the minute for a week, to see how much I am improving and in which I spend the most time on.
Comparing the tracking I did before I knew these techniques with the last time I tracked my time (two weeks ago) my procrastination hours decreased from 22 hours to 8 hours per week, this techniques work, trust me.
 
Before we get right into the topic, I have to say that the fact that you are not accomplishing that much could be either because of bad time management or a lack of focus and self-discipline apart from the procrastination problem.
 
Today, we won’t focus on those topics, we are going to see how to stop delaying the things we have to do, not how to do them more efficiently once you have started, that will come in the future.
 

Procrastination

First of all, let’s define what is procrastination.
 
We all know when we procrastinate (or most of the time) but, to solve a problem we first need to fully understand the challenge we are facing and it’s causes before we start working on the solution.
 

What is procrastination?

The scientific definition of procrastination is the following:
 
“Procrastination has identified not just any delay but an irrational one—that is, when we voluntarily put off tasks despite believing ourselves to be worse off for doing so.”
 
In other words, whenever you are putting off something you know you should be doing, you are procrastinating.
 
This definition of procrastination does not help us much, so let’s take a look at the counterpart of procrastination, The Motivation Equation, a term created by the author Piers Steel in his book “The Procrastination Equation”.
 

The Motivation Equation

 
When we are talking about motivation, we are talking about that feeling that pushes you to do things, you do not necessarily need to be motivated to do something but motivation makes you less likely to procrastinate.
 
Let’s take a look at each term of the motivation equation:
  • Expectancy: Expectancy represents the expectations you are putting on the task’s reward.
  • Value: Value represents the actual value you are getting from this task.
  • Impulsiveness: Impulsiveness represents how likely you are to stop doing the task you are doing.
  • Delay: Delay represents the amount of time that you’ll have to wait to get the task’s reward.
 
As you can see, the higher the expectancy and value, and the lower the impulsiveness and delay, the higher our motivation will be.
 
So, to be less likely to procrastinate (remember that you don’t need to be motivated to do your tasks), we need to both increase and decrease the terms of this equation.
 
Some good and easy ways to do that would be:
  • Increase Expectancy: Have a strong “Why” on the things you are doing, you don’t need to make them fun, they just have to be high-impacting in your life.
  • Increase Value: Give yourself rewards for completing milestones of your tasks.
  • Decrease Impulsiveness: Eliminate all possible distractions, remove access to your phone, turn off notifications, and disconnect the internet when you are working.
  • Decrease Delay: This term is the hardest one to decrease and usually you won’t be able to since deadlines are pre-established but you may want to set self-milestones for you to make that big delay into little ones.
 

The 6 triggers of procrastination

Now that we know what we can do to be less likely to procrastinate, let’s see why does procrastination appear in the first place because even tho motivation is the counterpart of procrastination, the lack of motivation is not the trigger for the appearance of procrastination.
 
According with what Chris Bailey says in his book “The Productivity Project”, procrastination is a phenomenon that occurs whenever a task is one or more of these 6 characteristics, the higher the intensity and amount of them, the higher the chances of procrastinating:
 
  • Boring
  • Difficult
  • Frustrating
  • Unstructured
  • Lacking in personal meaning
  • Lacking in intrinsic rewards
 
We are going to see how you can counter each one of these triggers and let me tell you (based on personal experience) that it couldn’t be more simple and effective, you’ll see.
But to finish off with our understanding of what is procrastination, let’s dive into the scientific side of procrastination.
 

The science behind why we procrastinate

The science involving procrastination is pretty dense since it is a problem we humans have been struggling with over many years.
 
To understand better why we procrastinate, we need to understand that procrastination comes from three psychological phenomenons: The temporary motivation theory, the downward counterfactuals, and the problems with executive functioning.
 

The Temporary Motivation Theory

To start with, the temporary motivation theory is a theory that was created after so many researches and experiments in which chronic procrastinators were responsible for performing different tasks through a wide variety of circumstances.
 
After many years of research and experimentation, the temporary motivation theory was created:
 
“Procrastinators focus on how to make themselves feel better at the expense of drawing insight from what made them feel bad”
 

The Downward Counterfactuals

Related with the TMT, the most common reason why we tend to procrastinate is because of downward counterfactuals.
 
The downward counterfactuals are statements that reflect a desire to improve one’s mood in the short term.
 
For example, phrases like “I work better under pressure” or “I still have tons of time to finishing this assignment” are downward counterfactuals since they are statements that focus on getting us to feel better on the present moment even tho we are procrastinating, ignoring the long term consequences of being doing so.
 

The Executive Functioning Problems

To finish with, researches have shown that procrastination problems are very related to executive functioning problems, these last are problems that require high cognitive functions to control our behavior, such as reasoning and problem-solving.
 
This means that situations that involve solving an executive functioning problems are much more likely to be the ones that we procrastinate on.
 
There is no doubt now of why we all tend to procrastinate at work or school, right?
 
In case you want to know more about all of the reasons why we procrastinate, here you have all of the researches I have mentioned:
Now that we clearly understand what is procrastination, why do we procrastinate and which are the main triggers that make it happen.
Let’s learn how to overcome it.
 

How to overcome procrastination

Overcoming procrastination is a process that goes through four different stages: the mental preparation, taking control or your environment, countering the procrastination triggers, and practicing.
 
We will see how to perform each of these stages and later on I will introduce you to the best strategy you can perform when you want to stop procrastinating, I guarantee you that the moment you start doing this technique, you will be amazed by how effective it is.
 

The Mental Preparation

The very first thing you need to do to avoid procrastination is to mentally prepare yourself to overcome it.
 
What is the first step to that? The first step is to forgive yourself.
 
If you are anything like me, you probably belong to the people who sometimes do not forgive their selves very often. We tend to base our identity on past actions both successes and failures and that couldn’t be more wrong.
 
Of course, it’s ok to be proud of your past successes and to learn from your mistakes but notice the difference between “learning” and “harassing”, even tho you have been a chronic procrastinator, that changes right now.
 
So, forgive yourself for all of those times you left an assignment to the last day, those times that you avoid doing the hard work or taking that difficult conversation because it’s ok, we are human, we are not perfect.
 

Identify the Causes of Procrastination

Continuing with the mental preparation, it is really important to identify the causes of your procrastination, because often they are not as clear as they may seem in the first place:
  • Maybe you procrastinate because you don’t like what you are doing
  • Maybe you procrastinate because you think it is a good thing, you perceive procrastination as a self-esteem boost.
  • Maybe you procrastinate because you live in an environment that encourages you to do so.
Whichever the cause, before you start working on solving the problem you need to know the source, because if you don’t solve the cause, the effect won’t disappear.
 

Having a “Why”

To finish with this very first step, as any other thing in life, you need a strong “Why” about stoping procrastinating because you won’t stick to the work you have to do in the long term if you do not have a strong reason to look at every day, at every moment of weakness.
 
The good news is that this “Why” could be anything, as long it is meaningful to you:
  • I want to stop procrastinating because I want to spend more time with my family, friends and couple.
  • I want to stop procrastinating because I want to start that personal project.
  • I want to stop procrastinating because I want to sleep more.
 

Take Control Of Your Environment

The second step in stopping procrastination is to take control of anything that involves the task that you are procrastinating on.
 
Taking control of your environment could be hard sometimes but let me tell you that it is the most impacting part of the process.
 
Usually, people work on an environment filled with distractions, that annoying coworker that won’t stop showing you puppy’s photos, that television next to your bedroom in which your parents are watching the new Game Of Thrones episode and that constant notification sound popping of your phone next to you.
 
All of these things do not help your chances of procrastinating decrease, they help them increase. That is why you need to take control of your environment.
  • Eliminate distractions: Get some noise-canceling headphones, go to a coffee shop or the library.
  • Eliminate choices: Turn off your phone, disconnect the internet if you don’t need it. Make not doing the task harder than actually doing it.
  • Avoid toxic people and situations: If you have specific persons whose presence makes you more likely to procrastinate, try to avoid contact with them while you are working.
 

Counter the procrastination triggers

We are almost done with our procrastination battle, the last piece of pre-work we need to do before we start building our workflow is to counter the six triggers of procrastination that we talked about before.
 
To illustrate this point let’s use an example.
 
Imagine that I want to stop procrastinating on writing for my blog.
 
I know that this task may be: boring, frustrating, difficult, unstructured, lacking in intrinsic rewards, or lacking in personal meaning. And that those characteristics are the cause of the procrastination.
 
What I’m going to do now is to counter each one of these triggers to be less likely to procrastinate:
  • Boring: I will go to my favorite coffee shop, listen to good music and get a nice looking drink so this activity is more fun
  • Frustrating: I will start by working just for 15 minutes on the outline of the post and continue only if I feel like to.
  • Difficult: I will write down all the things I would need to get help; other blog examples, my blogger friend contact…
  • Unstructured: I will develop a workflow to follow with different milestones of the process of creating a blog post and I will follow it step by step.
  • Lacking intrinsic rewards: I will allow myself to eat a yummy snack after I finish my work or I will take 30 minutes of breaks for every hour I work.
  • Lacking in personal meaning: I will both look at the long-term goal I am pursuing by performing this task and ask myself if this is really what I want to be doing.

 

Practice

Now that we know how to be prepared to avoid procrastinating, we have taken control of our environment and we have lowered as much as possible all of the procrastination triggers it is time to practice. And there is no secret here, as anything in life, the only way to get good at something is through practice.
 
Take the time to write down what you are going to do to avoid procrastination, what is working and what is not and develop a workflow that works for you, I guarantee you that over the long-term you will see tremendous results if you take the effort of working on a solution to your procrastination problem.
 
 
And, to make your practicing journey more efficient, I will share with you the most effective strategy against procrastination: The Pomodoro Technique.
 

The 1# technique to defeat procrastination: The Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro Technique is a technique developed by the student Francesco Cirillo in 1980 and it consists of breaking down your big task into little tasks, working on them for a specific amount of time, and then strategically taking breaks.
 
You can use the Pomodoro Technique for anything you want, from studying your next exam content, to writing that essay or for taking that course you want to take.
 
The Pomodoro Technique consists of four very simple steps:
 
  1. Decide a task that you will be working on, this task need to be as specific as possible.
  2. Work for 25 minutes only on that specific task and every time your mind wanders or you get distracted, write down what the distraction was about.
  3. After those 25 minutes take a 5 minutes break, you can invest this time to reward yourself with the distractions you have written down.
  4. Repeat the process 4 times and then take a longer break, after that long break you can perform the Pomodoro technique all over again if you want.
 
The main benefit of the Pomodoro technique is that it removes resistance on working on a task because the little task you have decided to perform is so specific and the time you are putting on it is so little that you are not likely to procrastinate on it.
 
Once you have started you have entered into “The Flow State”, that state in which you are 100% focus on a task, and time seems not to exist at all, and you are more likely to finish all of the tasks.
 
There are tons of experiments that have concluded the effectiveness of the Pomodoro technique, in case you want to know more about it:
 
I have been using the Pomodoro Technique on both my studies and personal projects for more than a year and it has been the most powerful improvement on my productivity levels. I achieve approximately 4x more than I did when I didn’t know about it.
 

All the time you need

To sum up, everything we have talked about today.
 
Remember that procrastination is the delay you put on a task that you know you should be doing and that the lack of motivation makes you more likely to procrastinate on a task, remember that procrastination a psychological phenomenon that is wired on the human brain, so forgive yourself and start solving it.
 
Keep in mind all of the triggers that produce procrastination and find ways to decrease their intensity. Try to increase your motivation as much as possible by modifying the motivation equation’s terms.
 
And try the Pomodoro technique, it has been a game-changer for many people, including myself, it may be it for you too.
 

Let’s kick out procrastination

As always, practicing is the way to go so let’s stop procrastinating right now:
  1. Identify one task that you usually procrastinate on
  2. Increase your motivation on that task as much as possible
  3. Counter all of the triggers that appear with that task
  4. Try the Pomodoro technique and check out the results
 
I hope this post was useful to you to procrastinate a little bit less, I’m sure that now you have a clearer understanding of what is procrastination and how to avoid it.
 
It would be amazing if you share this post and let me know what you think.
 
Thank you so much for your time, I appreciate it. See you soon!

 

Books Credits:

Bailey, Chris. “The Triggers of Procrastination.” The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy, by Chris Bailey, Crown Business, 2017.

Steel, Piers. “The Motivation Equation.” The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things off and Start Getting Things Done, by Piers Steel, Pearson, 2012.