Procrastination is NOT laziness. And unless we understand this, we can’t fix our procrastination problem.
We procrastinate when we don’t know how to handle the negative emotions generated by a task (e.g., anxiety). We then avoid working on a task even when we know that doing so is harmful.
And do you know one of the top three reasons for anxiety?
Perfectionism. It is the belief that one can’t afford to make any mistake.
Perfectionists are so scared of failure that they altogether avoid the task. What better way to make sure that you don’t make any mistakes? One very common behavior is to distract yourself (e.g., check your phone). Unfortunately, after the momentary relief, you are back to square one.
Now, the pending task creates even more anxiety and soon, it feels like a trap.
Perfectionists also overthink and take excessive precautions. You may have seen people who keep tweaking emails or documents again and again, before sending them out. This is the perfect recipe for anxiety. And when anxious, you procrastinate even more.
So how can we solve this problem?
I don’t want to give you generic solutions you will find on the internet. Instead, let me give you one specific action plan based on cognitive behavior therapy.
- Identify how exactly you procrastinate. E.g., do you check your phone? Do you keep tweaking your work? Do you find other tasks to work on which feel lower risk?
- The behavior you identified above are anxious behaviors. For each of them, identify a non-anxious alternative. E.g., if your anxious behavior is to edit your documents or email again and again, the non-anxious alternative behavior would be to edit it once, and then do a final proofread.
- Try the non-anxious alternative behavior identified above as an experiment. If this itself makes you anxious, think about the worst-case scenario and how you would cope with it. E.g., if the document you send out has a mistake, how will you handle it? Would a simple apology suffice?
Once you do this a few times, your anxiety and the resulting procrastination will decline.
Perfectionism is like carrying a heavy bag because we are afraid of putting it down. Please put it down — nothing will happen.
– Rajan