MSS #088: Overcoming Procrastination: Understanding and Conquering the Delays

MSS #088: Overcoming Procrastination: Understanding and Conquering the Delays

14 Sept, 2024

🕒Read time: 5.2 minutes

🚀In a hurry? Cut straight to “Positive Strategies to Overcome Procrastination” - reduced read time 3.3 minutes

Procrastination, this is a topic that comes up a lot, even with those you might imagine are big hitters in the world of – getting stuff done. Fascinating it’s such a common challenge.

Procrastination is not about laziness or disorganisation; it is fundamentally psychological behaviour, deeply rooted in our brain’s functioning.

This newsletter delves into the science behind procrastination, explains how it manifests and offers practical, actionable strategies to overcome it.

Understand why your brain resists certain tasks and learn how to train your mind to be more productive.

What is Procrastination?

Procrastination.

We have all experienced it.

But have you ever wondered why your mind seems to resist getting started on important tasks?

Understanding the root of procrastination can help us develop strategies to overcome it and enhance our productivity.

Procrastination is simply a psychological behaviour, where our mind tries to keep us safe by avoiding tasks that seem daunting or unpleasant.

This behaviour often stems from learnt "rules" established in our early years before the age of 7 or major learning events after this.

Often unpleasant experiences influence our minds need to protect us from those learnt historic threats.

These “rules”, designed to protect us from perceived threats, can become barriers to productivity when carried into adulthood.

Procrastination in fact comes from a place of love and support from our own minds.

The Science Behind Procrastination

Procrastination is a common behaviour rooted in our brain's structure and functioning.

The brain's use of procrastination as a protective mechanism against past negative experiences is well-documented in psychology.

Here's what science tells us about why we procrastinate and how to overcome it:

1. Emotional Regulation:
Procrastination is often a result of poor emotion regulation rather than time management issues.

Our brain tries to protect us from negative emotions associated with certain tasks by avoiding them.

If a task reminds us of a past failure or unpleasant experience, our brain may encourage procrastination as a way to avoid potential stress or anxiety.

2. Amygdala's Role:
The amygdala, which processes emotions and threats, plays a key role in procrastination.

People who chronically procrastinate may have a larger amygdalae, making them more sensitive to potential negative consequences of their actions.

This heightened sensitivity can lead to avoidance behaviours as the brain tries to protect us from perceived threats or discomfort. Practice gratitude daily for as little as about 60 days has been shown in brain scans to reduce the size of the amygdala, reducing its impact and strengthens the ACC in the prefrontal cortex, that supports rational practical thinking.

3. Learned Behaviour:
Procrastination can become a learned response to tasks that have been associated with negative outcomes in the past.

If we've experienced failure, criticism, or stress when attempting similar tasks before, our brain may try to protect us by encouraging avoidance through procrastination.

4. Dopamine and Reward Seeking:
When we procrastinate, we often turn our attention to more pleasant activities, which releases dopamine (a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward).

This temporary relief reinforces the procrastination behaviour, as our brain learns to associate avoidance with positive feelings.

5. Temporal Discounting:
Our brains tend to prioritise immediate rewards over long-term benefits.

This can lead to procrastination as the brain tries to protect us from immediate discomfort, even if it means potentially greater discomfort in the future.

How Does Procrastination Show Up?

Even the most action orientated people will recognise these I think,

• Avoidance: Putting off tasks until the last minute.

• Distraction: Engaging in non-essential activities to avoid the task at hand.

• Perfectionism: Delaying tasks due to fear of making mistakes or not meeting high standards.

• Indecision: Struggling to make decisions, leading to inaction.

• Excuses: I cannot do X until Y happens. Y is allegedly out of our control! Convenient!

Positive Strategies to Overcome Procrastination

1. Practice Self-Compassion:
   Understand that procrastination is a common response.

Be kind to yourself and recognise that this behaviour can be changed with patience and practice. Avoid beat yourself up about it.

Often, it’s a learned behaviour which can be unlearned, or more accurately, we can create new habits to enjoy taking action and get a dopamine hit from taking action.

2. Break Tasks into Smaller Steps:
   Large projects can be overwhelming. By breaking them into manageable steps, you can reduce anxiety and make steady progress.

This is a practical step, to make the task appear less daunting.

It’s often coupled with two very different approaches,

• Do the biggest task first, as then all the other tasks look easier.

• Do the smallest tasks first, to get “momentum” and show yourself taking action is ok.

You will know best which approaches suits you best.

3. Set Realistic Deadlines:
   Define what you want to achieve with specific, measurable, and time-bound goals. This provides a clear direction and purpose.

Sometimes, the act of setting an artificial deadline works. A bit like when you cannot be bothered to do the housework, but you have friends coming round, so that kicks you into being motivated for action.

Reward yourself for meeting these deadlines to stay motivated.

NB Dopamine is released in anticipation of completing a task, not the actually completion, so rewarding yourself for progress towards full completion is a good idea.

4. Focus on Positive Outcomes:

   Visualise the positive outcomes and potential rewards of completing tasks. This can shift your mindset from avoiding discomfort to seeking achievement.

Particularly powerful is visualising the relief as your stress drops, on completing a task in your mind’s eye.

5. Use the Pomodoro Technique:
   Work in short, focused bursts (e.g., 25 minutes) followed by a short break. This can enhance concentration and reduce the mental burden of long tasks.

There are lots of variations on this, too many to mention here. One I quite like is the concept of deep work, maybe look this up.

6. Create a Positive Environment:
   Minimise distractions and create a workspace that encourages focus.

This could involve organising your desk, using noise-cancelling headphones, or setting specific work hours.

For example if you have decided to start running, get all your running kit ready by the front door the day before, so you are eliminating a potential excuse and priming your mind to think about running.

7. Close the Gap with Your Future Self:
   Our brains often see our future selves as separate entities, making it easier to push tasks onto that future version of ourselves.

Techniques to close this gap include regularly imagining your near-future self and the benefits they will experience from your actions today. This helps create a sense of immediacy and personal connection to future outcomes.

I have a powerful way of doing this I share in coaching and workshops.

8. Practice Gratitude:
   Studies have shown that practising gratitude can reduce the size of the amygdala, thus reducing the sensitivity to negative emotions and perceived threats.

Incorporate daily gratitude exercises to help your brain become more resilient and less prone to procrastination.

9. Start list (to do list):
   Rather than create a to do this, detailing or the things you need to do, create a start list.

   Take the same tasks, but list the first step you need to take, not a list of the completed task ie.

   Right a report - becomes “Write down report title”

   Record video content - “set up camera”

   Prepare a one page strategy document - “write down first 3 key things for a strategy document”

   This is far less daunting and get’s you started.

My Personal Journey Overcoming Procrastination

As a highly creative and conceptual thinker, I have always valued creating multiple ways to solve an issue over actually executing them. This tendency often led to procrastination, as my brain found pleasure in the creation of ideas rather than the execution of tasks.

To address this, I developed a technique through my program,

"7 Ways of Thinking That Trip Us Up and How to Untangle Yourself."

This approach focuses on recognising and altering unhelpful thought patterns that contribute to procrastination.

In my journey, the tool I created was pivotal and surprisingly easy to do and takes up little time, to radically change my thinking to a more action orientated approach without loosing my intuitive creative thinking.

Training myself in Emergenetics, a tool that helps understand thinking styles, was also helpful Through this training, I discovered more about my own thinking styles and how they influenced my procrastination.

By acknowledging my preference for conceptual thinking, I learned to balance idea generation with actionable steps. This self-awareness has been crucial in transforming my approach to tasks and reducing procrastination.

Motivation

This is a big topic, so I will go very light on this here.

The most relevant point here is the better we understand our sense of purpose and how the action we want to take is aligned with that, the better we get at taking action.

Our minds want to be congruent (aligned) with what we think we are here to do. A big topic for another day.

Final Thoughts

Procrastination is a learned behaviour, but it can be unlearned.

By understanding its roots and applying practical strategies, we can train our minds to be more productive and less prone to delay.

Remember, if you procrastinate a lot, don’t see this as an excuse and justification. Instead, choose to change it.

I see it in two ways,

1) Practical steps that help us get into action.

2) The game changer I used, getting to the root of the “programming” in our minds and learning to enjoy taking action. My own technique worked so well on me I have to hold myself back now – its rather strange as a former procrastinator!

If you want to dive deeper into managing procrastination or other mind-related challenges, feel free to reach out for a chat. Together, we can create lasting habits for success.

 Contact me if you think I can help you further at [email protected].

Summary

Procrastination is a complex psychological behaviour rooted in emotional regulation, brain structure, and learned responses.

This newsletter explored its causes and offers strategies to overcome it, fostering productivity and action-oriented habits.

• Emotional regulation and the role of the amygdala

• Learned behaviours from past negative experiences

• Dopamine and reward-seeking tendencies

• Practical strategies to combat procrastination, such as the Pomodoro Technique and self-compassion

• Importance of visualising positive outcomes and consequences

See you next week. One more thought 👇

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That's it for this week. Thanks for reading, really hope this helped. Contact me if you think I can help you further at [email protected].

Happy thinking.