Gails Blog

When I was a kid, I procrastinated. I procrastinated so much, in fact, that my four-year-old brother who could barely say the word would admonish me (right after my mother had) for procrastinating. I wasn’t amused.

My daughter also procrastinates. Why do today what you can put off till tomorrow? It’s a huge bone of contention between us because despite the fact that I used to be a big-time procrastinator, I am particularly intolerant of her procrastination. (My mother always said, “We hate most in others the things we dislike in ourselves.”)

So I got to thinking about procrastination and why we do it. What’s that invisible force that seems to hold us back? Since this is the very specter that can haunt us when it comes to our money, it seems a worthwhile point of discussion for m’blog. After all, if you know you should be saving, but you just aren’t, you’re procrastinating. And if you believe it’s high time you set up a filing system, but tomorrow you’ll have more time, you’re procrastinating. And if you’re avoiding addressing your ever-growing debt load because it’s so intimidating, well…

So why do we procrastinate? According to the University of Cambridge website (http://www.counselling.cam.ac.uk/procras.html), we procrastinate because we:

•     have a distorted sense of the time available

•     can’t prioritize

•     have too much to do

•     are anxious and so spend more time worrying than doing

•     have difficulty concentrating

•     don’t know what to do

•     are overwhelmed by what needs to be done

•     are afraid of failing or afraid of succeeding, and what might come next

•     are perfectionists

•     are bored by what we have to do

•     can’t problem-solve

•     avoid doing things we think are hard or that we don’t like to do

 

Want to stop procrastinating? You can. I did. And I’m going to help Alex overcome her tendency to put it off. Here’s what I’m planning to tell her:

•     Unpleasant tasks are rarely as horrible as you think they are going to be. Bite the bullet and do the crap you’re dreading the most first, to get it out of the way. Schedule it for early in the day and then give yourself a reward when you’ve got it done.

•     When you’re working on a big project and you’re afraid of the size, you have to break the job down into manageable pieces. When the job seems too big or feels like it’ll eat up your whole life, it’s easy to put it off. Break large jobs into smaller, more manageable tasks. Once you’ve halved or quartered the job, do something to start, no matter how small, so you create some momentum.

•     Can’t make up your mind when or where to start? Pick a time for making a decision and the criteria for making it and tell someone who can hold you accountable.

•     Afraid of failure (or of success)? Create a clear mental picture of the completed project in your mind and think about how you will feel when it’s over. Focus on the end result, not just the process. Keep reminding yourself how good you’ll feel when you’re finished. Maintain your high standards, but recognize that sometimes 80 percent for you may well be 100 percent for someone else.

•     Feeling tired? Feeling lazy? Just not interested in doing the job? We all have to do crap we don’t want to do, don’t like to do, don’t see the point in doing. Hey, why should I have to scrub the lime scale off the inside of the shower stall? And, by the way, who stamped “change the bed linens” on my forehead? Schedule these tasks for a time when your energy is up.

•     Hostility towards the boss is sometimes a barrier to getting the job done. So if your gut response is to resent me asking you to clean your room, or a teacher you don’t like gives you work you don’t think is worthy, you procrastinate. That neither gets you out of the job nor does it make the job go away. So just do it.

•     Distraction and a lack of focus can make jobs that should only take an hour take all day. Then you blame the job. But it’s not the job. It’s the lack of focus. Try creating a to-do list with priorities. Block time for projects and then make a rule that you are not allowed to move out of your chair, make a call, surf the net, pick up a book, until you’ve finished your task. The sense of accomplishment in having completed something will help you start the next thing after your (short) break.

Like Alex and her homework, you can’t sidestep your financial responsibilities forever. Decide what you’re going to do to rectify your financial mistakes and then tell someone. Tell many someones. Your odds of following through will increase dramatically if you are held accountable for your actions — or lack thereof. Talk about your goals with friends or family members. Or recruit someone interested in the same goal to buddy-up with you. Document your journey in a journal or on a blog. And keep yourself motivated by rewarding yourself as you progress.

Good luck. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 9:26 am and is filed under Bad Habits!, Thinking Out Loud. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.