7 Counterintuitive Tips For Beating Procrastination
by: Fast Company
from: JANET MILLER
1. TELL
YOURSELF YOU "DON’T" PROCRASTINATE
Procrastination is what we call it when we give in to the
temptation of being distracted. Simply saying "no" to that temptation
is often too hard for many of us to do. But an experiment published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that how you say "no" has an impact on how
successfully you resist temptation: if you're trying to diet, should you tell
yourself "I can’t eat chocolate
cake," or, "I don’t eat
chocolate cake"?
In the study, 30 women were asked to
think of a goal and work on it for 10 days. Whenever they felt the urge to
cheat on their goals, 10 participants were instructed to reframe their
temptations as "I can't," 10 were told to say "I don't,"
and 10 weren't given a specific strategy, but asked to "just say no."
Here’s what the results looked like 10
days later:
• Three out of 10 in the "just say no" group persisted for all 10 days.
• One out of 10 in the "can’t" group had persisted with her goal.
• An incredible eight out of 10 in the "don’t" group had stuck with their goals for the entire 10 days.
•
Three out of 10 in the "just say no" group persisted for all 10 days.
•
One out of 10 in the "can’t" group had persisted with her goal.
•
An incredible eight out of 10 in the "don’t" group had stuck with their goals for the entire 10 days.
2. TAKE
MORE BREAKS
We already know that it's impossible to stay productive
for hours on end. But some researchers say they've
cracked the optimal ratio of work to rest time for productivity: one 17-minute
break for every 52 minutes of work.
Whether or not you choose to clock those
exact intervals, it may turn out that taking smaller, measured breaks can help
us sidestep much longer-term procrastination. The caveat, of course, is that we
need to commit to beginning work in the first place. But then taking a few
breaks in between can help you sustain that momentum. Instead of helping us to
manage our time, this helps us to manage our energy or our capacity to
work—and, consequently, our power to avoid putting things off altogether.
3. DON’T
FOCUS ON THE TASK AT HAND
It’s natural to procrastinate on something you dislike.
But chances are you'll enjoy getting it over and done with. So focus on the success you'll feel by completing
something.
Identify the piece of your task that will only take
two minutes to complete, then do it right away.
It turns out that can be a simple yet
effective shift in mind-set. You'll be moving your attention away from the
thing you hate doing and want to avoid, and toward the accomplishment and
freedom you'll feel when you complete it. That may be just enough to remove the
mental obstacles to actually getting started.
4. COMMIT
TO JUST TWO MINUTES
Procrastination isn’t always about an unwillingness to
get something over and done with. Sometime's it’s just about avoiding that
initial push. You can jumpstart your engine with the "two-minute rule," which helps you break
your most daunting undertakings into tiny bites: Identify the piece of your
task that will only take two minutes to complete, then do it right away. Next,
identify the next two-minute task, and so on. If you have a big assignment pending,
just tell yourself to work on it for two minutes. You may be surprised to find
yourself still plugging away after an hour. The key here is just getting going.
5. PUNISH
YOURSELF
There's a learning behavior long known to psychologists
as "operant
conditioning." Every time you resist procrastinating part
of your work, give yourself a small reward. But for every time you fail, punish
yourself by taking something away, like trimming time off of your next break.
Studies show that in certain cases,
negative stimuli are more powerful and effective than positive ones. By pulling
the two levers of positive and negative reinforcement, you may be able to tap
into your brain's reward system. If you're only giving yourself positive
incentives, then failure to perform a certain action merely means not getting
the reward. But what a punishment does is introduce a consequence. (Just
remember to go easy on yourself.)
6. EMBRACE
IMPERFECTION
It sounds perfectly reasonable to want
to wait for the right time to do the right things and do them well. We tell
ourselves that we aren't putting things off, we’re just biding our time.
Chances are that on some level, reading this article
on procrastination is itself a form of procrastination.
Researchers have learned, though, that procrastination is
partly driven by a fear of evaluation and failure.
The reality is that no one is perfect, and expecting your own performance to be
is the surest way to avoid having to perform at all.
So forget about waiting for the perfect
timing—there’s no better time than now.
7. STOP
TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHY YOU PROCRASTINATE
Don’t fall into the trap of analysis
paralysis. Chances are that on some level, reading this article on
procrastination is itself a form of procrastination. The longer you try to get
to the bottom of shaking the habit, the more your efforts remain in the realm
of theory rather than practice.
There’s a reason why Nike hasn't changed
its slogan for decades. There comes a time when you've just got to tell
yourself, "Just Do It."
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