Are you a procrastinator?
I know I am.
Dozens of household and work-related tasks go uncompleted or finished at the very last minute.
Procrastination drives me crazy, and it’s become a habit I am determined to break.
To help me break the habit, my daughter sent me a podcast by Mel Robbins called “The Only Way to Stop Procrastinating (Based on Research).”
It’s worth a listen.
(Of course, the procrastinating me took seven days to finish the 30-minute recording.)
And then I listened to it again.
Here’s what I’ve learned:
•Procrastination is a habit you can break.
•There are two types of procrastination. One is conscious procrastination where you pause your task and come back to it. The second is destructive procrastination, the one I am determined to break.
•Destructive procrastination is triggered by stress. It has nothing to do with the actual task you want to complete.
Researchers, according to Robbins, define procrastination as the mind’s subconscious response to immediately feel better. Our mind’s fight-or-flight responses cause us to just freeze.
Unfortunately, what we’re stressed about is not easily identifiable.
Robbins likened stress to a backpack we wear. It’s behind us, not easily seen. We subconsciously think about what’s in our stress backpacks, and this preoccupation overflows to the tasks that need to be done.
I sometimes refer to these as “squirrel moments.” I am thinking about a task and then “squirrel” — oh look, my phone, let’s check out social media. Three hours pass and the task is still not complete.
We avoided the task because the squirrel moment made us feel better, the reason we sought to procrastinate in the first place.
We need to forgive ourselves when those squirrel moments happen. Feeling bad about our behavior only leads to more stress and more destructive procrastination.
Remember it’s OK to indulge in a squirrel moment — just make sure you return to what you wanted to do in the first place.
Robbins recommends the five-count method to stop our procrastination habits.
Tell yourself to focus just five seconds to the task and put all other thoughts out of your mind.
Tell yourself you’ll give seconds, which turns into five minutes or an hour, and soon the task is done.
And you feel better because things are getting done or, even better, things are completed.
That’s what occurred with this column. I devoted five seconds to typing the first few sentences, and that has led to a completed task in 45 minutes.
Are you ready to end your destructive procrastination?
Begin now. In 5-4-3-2-1.