Tackling procrastination
Did you know beating Procrastination with sheer willpower is a terrible strategy?
Willpower is hard to come by and it uses a lot of neural resources. Willpower is also depletable so you shouldn’t use it to fend of your urges to procrastinate unless it’s absolutely necessary. You should instead focus on developing effective habits to overcome procrastination.
Why habits?
A good habit is an energy saver for us. It allows us to free our minds for other types of activities. Once you build up good habits, you won’t need to exert a lot of willpower to get things done.
You can think of habits as having 3 parts:
The cue: This is the trigger that launches your habits. Cues fall into four categories:
- Location
- Time
- How you feel
- Reactions
A cue by itself is neither helpful or harmful; it’s what we do in reaction to a cue that matters.
The routine: The routine is the habitual response that your brain falls into after it receives the cue. This is the actual behaviour that happens after a cue, e.g. you open your Facebook app on your phone (the routine) after you receive a notification (cue).
The reward: Every habit continues and happens because of a Reward. It gives us an immediate feeling of pleasure. Falling into the habit of procrastination is easy for us because the reward of moving your mind to immediate pleasures is very powerful.
Change your habits to beat procrastination
You need to take notes of the behaviours that lead you to procrastinate. In order to do that, you need to figure out what cues, routines and rewards lead you to procrastinate.
The golden rule of habit states that in most cases if you keep the initial cue, replace the routine, and keep the reward, change will eventually occur. In some habits, this might not work, so you might need to experiment with the cue, routine and reward to see where a change is necessary for you to develop a good habit.
How to diagnose a habit
Generally modern day procrastination involves the internet. If your online behaviour is something like this:
Then you need to determine what routine you need to change so that your time on social media is shortened.
There is nothing wrong with taking a break on social media, especially if you’re feeling tired. However, these websites are designed to keep visitors on the platform for as long as possible which means your social media breaks can end up costing you time.
In this case, if the reward is social interaction with friends/family, then a possible solution for this behaviour would be to study at home. With this new adjustment, every time it’s 4.30pm, instead of finding people to chat online, you can instead have a short chat with family/friends without having to go on social media.
If the reason you’re taking a Facebook break at 4.30pm is because you want some time off from studying, then you can just take a 5 minute break to walk or read something else on the internet to get refreshed.
Diagnosing habits involves a lot of trial and error. As long as you’re trying to modify either the cue, routine or reward with something positive, you’ll eventually come to a solution for fixing your bad habits.
Tools to stop procrastination
If you’re about to change a routine that involves avoiding the internet then the following apps will help:
Self-control
Self control is a free app that you can use to temporarily ban yourself from accessing your most addictive websites. You can set a timer for up to 24 hours and prevent your computer from accessing these websites.
StayFocusd
StayFocusd is a free chrome extension that you can use to temporarily ban yourself from accessing your most addictive websites from your chrome browser. You can set a timer for up to 24 hours.
News Feed Eradicator
News Feed Eradicator is a free chrome extension that replaces your Facebook newsfeed with inspirational quotes. This means you can still use the handy Facebook features like chat and Facebook groups without getting sucked in to reading everything on the newsfeed.
Forest
Forest is a mobile app that prevents you from accessing your phone for a set period of time. Every time you set a timer and prevent yourself from accessing your phone, a tree grows. The more you focus, the more trees grows on the app.
Create a list to stay organised
Research has shown that creating lists help your subconscious to grapple with the tasks on the list so that your mind can figure out how to accomplish them.
If you don’t write your tasks down on a list, they linger in your working memory, taking up valuable space from your short term memory. Once you make a list, your working memory is freed up ready for problem solving.
A great app for creating list is Todoist. This app allows you to sync your to do tasks on your computer and smartphone so that you have your daily task ready to go every day.
Focus on process instead of product to complete tasks
It’s perfectly normal to have negative feelings towards accomplishing unwanted tasks – even if it’s something you normally like. Researchers have found that non-procrastinators put their negative feelings aside to get things done.
If you procrastinate, you might not be able to put those negative feelings aside. Fortunately, you can reframe things by focusing on the process of the task, rather than the product.
Process, product, whaaat?
- Process: is the time spent working on a problem or task
- An example of a process goal would be:
- “I’m going to research my assignment for 30 minutes today”
- An example of a process goal would be:
- Product: is the outcome of accomplishing a task
- An example of a product goal would be:
- “I have to finish my 3000 word assignment ”
- An example of a product goal would be:
To prevent procrastination, you want to avoid concentrating on product, instead putting your attention on the process because the product is what triggers the pain that causes you to procrastinate.
You need to focus on the moment, instead of thinking about accomplishing the whole task. The easiest way for you to focus on the process, is to do the Pomodoro technique.
To use the Pomodoro technique effectively, you need to:
- Spend every 25 minute session on the process of accomplishing a task, be as specific as possible, without a having a specified outcome.
- Then take a 5 minute break and reward yourself for accomplishing that task.
- Repeat for 4-5 sessions.
By focusing on process rather than product you allow yourself to back away from judging yourself and instead you allow yourself to focus on the work.
Main takeaways
- Watch for procrastination cues. Try to put yourself in surroundings with few distractions
- Try to change the routines of habits that lead to procrastination
- Have a plan for procrastination
- Keep a planner so that you can easily track when you reach your goals
- Break down large tasks into smaller chunks
- Reward yourself throughout the day for your hard work
- Focus on the process rather than the results of a task
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