Procrastination is one of those things that can often feel great in the moment – when you’re binging your favorite Netflix show instead of working and you feel all happy and relaxed – but which feels pretty darn terrible at the end of the day when you have tons of tasks to do and you know that you don’t have enough time to do them.
So, why do we do it? Why do we leave things to pile up until the last minute when we know that it will only make life harder for us, and our business, from increased operating costs to missed deadlines, further down the line? And what can we do to stop procrastinating and start getting things done?
The Psychology Behind “Too Late”
As humans, we are hard-wired to avoid discomfort at all costs, and we are wired to find change uncomfortable too. Both of these things play a significant role in why we so often find ourselves procrastinating. We lean on short-term optimism: “Maybe it’ll hold another quarter,” or “We’ll deal with that next budget cycle,” and think that will see us through.
These behaviors are particularly compounded in business when we have lots of competing priorities from answering emails to doing the books to speaking with clients, which all have a similarly high level of urgency. It causes our brains to panic and sort of shut down to the point where we cannot do much of anything at all, and we end up doing things that don’t matter, like playing on our phones or watching TV instead. This is what Psychologist Daniel Kahneman called “cognitive ease”, and basically, it means that we prefer the familiar path, even when it leads to predictable pain later.
Sadly, the cost of delay is something that compounds. Not fixing that leaking warehouse roof today with a call to your local flat roofers can lead to leaking and ruined stock tomorrow, or putting off that ales pitch today can lead to your competitors swooping in and stealing that client tomorrow. You need to be able to overcome procrastination if you want to succeed in business or life, but how exactly do you do that?
Break things down
The first step to overcoming procrastination in business (and life) is to break down bigger tasks into smaller, more manbagebable chunk, Often when you have a big tsk to completel the mere thought of it can be so overwhelming that you cannot bring yourself to even get started, but if you can break it down intot he smallest possible straps, then it is easier to get started, and then you can let momentum carry you forward.
For example, if you need to write a blog to boost your SEO, you might find getting 500 words down a daunting prospect, so don’t tell yourself that you need 500 words right now. Tell yourself that you need to get down a single sentence. Once you’ve written that first sentence, you will find that the next one and the next one come to you with much more ease, and before you know it, you will have 500 words of polished content you can post on your website.
This method works for pretty much any task you can think of.
Prioritize
If you want to stop procrastinating, then it’s a really good idea to work out which tasks are most important to your business. These are the tasks that actually move the needle, so to speak, and advance your business in some way. For example, working on your sales pitch is going to get you further in business than organizing your desk; although organizing your desk may be an important part of improving your productivity some time in the future, it is not going to have immediate results like a great sales pitch that you can deliver at the drop of a hat will.
Eat the frog
Eat the frog is a phrase used to describe the process of doing the task that is the hardest, most challenging, and most likely to make you want to procrastinate first. By doing the thing you dread most first, you get it out of the way, and then the rest of your day is smooth sailing in comparison, so it gives you the momentum you need to do things now, and not wait until it’s too late. It’s a simple psychological trick, but one that really does work for a lot of people. So, schedule your business days so that you get the hardest part out of the way as often as you can, and life will be better, and you will be more efficient, as a result.
Implement the 2-minute rule
What’s that, I hear you ask. Well, it’s pretty simple. If any given business task takes less than two minutes for you to complete, then you should commit to doing it the right way instead of putting it off. It’s an easy win and an easy way to boost your productivity and keep procrastination to a minimum.
Think about the consequences
If you are thinking about putting something off, then a good way of pulling yourself back can often be to really think about the consequences. To use the same example as above, if your roof is leaking, think about how not calling the flat roofers to come and take a look at it could lead to leaks, or worse. The roof caving in and running your stock, and you will quickly want to act, after all, right? And although not all business issues are quite as catastrophic, this really is a tactic that can work because there are always consequences to procrastination in business.
Reward yourself
Sometimes, the carrot works better than the stick, so giving yourself a reward when you do something instead of procrastinating can often work well. It can be something as simple as a cup of coffee after answering emails or as exciting as a spa day after you finish a big project – it doesn’t matter as long as it is sufficiently motivating for you to actually want to do the work.
No more waiting until it’s too late!