The Procrastination Abyss

So, it’s nearly 2pm and of course I procrastinated most of the morning (edit: most of the week) before I started this. I wrote a list (I love a list! I mean, it’s THE perfect way to procrastinate, yet still feel like you’re doing something!) Then checked my email, then checked Instagram, messed around on my website, checked my bank balance, then checked Instagram again. And again.

Procrastination is honesty the bane of my life, to the point where it severely impacts me, my work and quite honestly how I feel about myself a lot of the time. We’ve been conditioned by society to measure our self-worth in what we do and our productivity (thanks Capitalism!) so, when we’re not able to ‘just get on,’ it’s easy leap to label ourselves as lazy or incompetent.

Today was perhaps unusual in a lot of ways, because here I am just before 2pm actually writing. I’ve done it, I’ve started it, and I always know that’s the hardest part.

My issue is that often, far too often, I have complete mental block to even get started at all. At the back end of last year, before Christmas I was caught up in what I’d describe as a ‘procrastination spiral of doom’ to the point where I was absolutely completely paralysed. Nothing would move, nothing would flow. The pressure and the tension immense, the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be was widening and I was losing hold of the means to get there. I would go days and sometimes weeks without being able to work, very much to the detriment of myself and my business. I was SO frustrated with myself. WHY could I not just DO IT?

The weird thing is once I do, I really love it! Once I’m working, writing, I totally find my flow. Genuine flow, where I’m fully absorbed, fully in the moment, time and space almost disappear. I almost forget myself, as I got lost in the stream of words that flow out on me, through my fingers and onto the screen.  I’m lucky in that when I start eventually, I work intensely and quickly. And then, when I’m done and I have something to show for my efforts, I get an immense satisfaction out of it.

And this is what confuses me most. If it’s not a particularly painful process, why is it that difficult? I know that I’m not alone in this. I know from speaking to clients and friends, there are lots of us out there struggling with the same thing. So, I really wanted to understand this behaviour more. I started to investigate, to try and understand what was happening and why. 

As a first port of call most of us first try to change the behaviour (the procrastination) with planning, scheduling and sheer willpower and more often than not that fails. Why? Because there is a thought and a feeling that is driving that behaviour and without addressing these, any attempts to address the behaviour is likely to fail. Here is a very simplified diagram of how that process works:

In order to break the procrastination cycle, we therefore need to change the thought or the feeling. In my experience it is super super difficult to change how we feel. I mean if we could, life would be so much easier right? So, my starting point was to start with the thoughts and try to understand the thoughts that were leading to the procrastination behaviour.

Now my procrastination had got that bad that these thoughts were so loud and overwhelming it wasn’t difficult to spot them. Every time I went to approach the keyboard, I would be overwhelmed not just by the task it’s self but what the task MEANT about my work and my business and what that would mean about me. A blog post would turn into, what if this is rubbish? What if it’s not helpful? What if I can’t help people? What if I can’t get clients? What if I’m just not good enough? What will people think? What if I fail?

And you can see how that quickly escalates and the challenge is no longer about putting pen to paper but about facing a whole existential question as to whether you are going to succeed in the world. No wonder it’s all too much!

Next time you find yourself in the same situation, try to stop and notice and listen to the thoughts that arise. It’s not always easy. These thoughts are known as Negative Automatic Thoughts and the fact that they are automatic means they are super quick and reactive, which means our logical rational brain doesn’t always have chance to catch them.

So, if its these thoughts that are causing the procrastination, what can we do about it? Well let’s start by breaking down some of those thoughts to understand them better.

Perfectionist Thinking

A lot of procrastinators tend to be perfectionists. Now let me explain here what I mean by perfectionist, as I don’t necessarily mean someone who must always have their desk in order and a colour coded sock drawer. Not all perfectionists look like this. You can be a covert perfectionist too.  That is someone who directs their perfectionism inwards and holds those same high standards of perfection and control over themselves.

 The reason perfectionist do this is because they believe that being ‘perfect’ will protect them from any kind of judgement, criticism and rejection. Therefore perfection = pain prevention, it’s a coping mechanism.

So where does procrastination come into this? Perfectionists have the need to do things, particularly things that are important to them, flawlessly. They create rigid ‘rules’ about how and when things need to be done and to what standard.

This need adds tons of extra pressure on a task. We set such impossible high standards for ourselves and our work. The pressure to perform is palpable. It feels too much and we feel like we’re not enough. We have an ideal vision of something in our heads but there’s something deep within us that doesn’t believe that we’re capable of bringing that vision out into the word in the ‘perfect’ way we want to. And if it’s not perfect, it’s easy to feel like it’s not worth bothering at all. This perfectionistic thinking is ‘all or nothing thinking’. Anything less than perfect is a failure.

This often means it feels safer to us not to act at all, rather than risk that perceived anticipated failure, and this is what inevitably leads to avoidance and procrastination.

If this is something that you can relate to. Take a moment now to reflect and think about any perfectionistic thoughts that may have contributed to you procrastinating on a task

Fear

Let us then delve a little deeper and look at that fear that is at the heart of the perfectionistic thinking. Fear is the feeling that we are looking to avoid. The fear of failure rejection and criticism is often the real driving force behind procrastination.

Procrastination often seem like inertia but it’s not, it’s a proactive reaction against the feeling of fear. It’s a choice we are making upon listening and believing our worst fears. This creates tension, physical and emotional tension. Notice how you feel physically when you procrastinate. Procrastination isn’t stillness, there’s actually a lot of energy needed to keep you in that state of avoidance. So why do we do it? Because, procrastination means we can avoid that feeling of hurt and shame from any potential rejection, failure or criticism.

 However, the toxic thing about this kind of ‘protection’ is that by procrastinating we’re agreeing that these fears are true. We are proving and confirming to ourselves that we’re not capable, that we are too stupid, that we’re not good enough and we feel bad anyway! It’s a false economy. The fact that we procrastinate, then feeds off itself. Our worst fears become true in the light of our unmet tasks, goals and dreams. This leads to a cycle of stress, anxiety and feelings of worthlessness.

If this rings true for you, challenge some of those thoughts and fears and ask questions.

How true are the fears? What evidence do you have? What would that mean if it were true? About your work? About You?

Are there any other possibilities that may also be equally true? Are there any other likely outcomes? Outcomes that would be more helpful for you to think about?

List all the other more positive outcomes. What if you didn’t fail, what if you did your best work? What is the opportunity and where could this lead. Write down all the other possible alternatives now.

Self-Criticism

Listen careful to your internal voice. How you speak to yourself is so important. Your thoughts become your actions. Are you telling yourself that you’re not good enough, that you’re not capable, that you’re going to fail anyway? Fear and perfectionism lead us to be our own harshest critics. The key to breaking the procrastination cycle is self-compassion.

The more you berate yourself, the worse you will feel. Self-criticism rarely motivates anyone. Telling yourself you’re lazy or disorganised, isn’t going to help. In reality it will serve to create a worse negative self-image and this creates a self-fulfilling prophesy.

A quote by Henry Ford springs to mind:

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't – you're right”

Our thoughts really do create our reality. Really try to practice how you talk to yourself when you procrastinate. Again, writing this down really helps. You may even be shocked and surprised about what comes up. Practice going through and writing next to each item a more compassionate response. Think about:

How can you be kinder to yourself?

How can you relax some of the rules?

How can you support and encourage yourself?

Overwhelm

Another key culprit of procrastination is overwhelm, and based on the hard time we give ourselves above, it’s easy to see how all this rigid thinking can quickly spirals into feelings of overwhelm.

In addition to this, we can also feel overwhelmed when we have a long list of things to do. You know the one, where there are so many items on the ‘to do’ list’ that we don’t know where to start. And then because there feels like too much, we bury our heads in the sand and don’t start at all.

This is especially true of the people I see that are running their own business or working on a creative project on the side of a day job. We give ourselves so much to do and it’s completely counterproductive. There’s no point in having 20 things on your ‘to do’ list and then doing none of them because you feel overwhelmed.

All that happens is our ‘To Do’ lists become a rolling log of all the things we haven’t achieved, picking up more and more tasks along the way like an uncontrollable snowball that smacks us in the face the next day/ week/ month.

If you’re nodding your head to this, there is another way!  Write down any goals, tasks, jobs, or responsibilities that you’re feeling overwhelmed with right now and write down why they are making you feel overwhelmed. Go through the list. Which ones are essential, I mean really essential?  What’s the minimum viable thing you need to be doing right now? Which ones can you cross off or delegate to someone else?

GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO LET THINGS GO

I’m shouting this, as it comes up in my client sessions ALL the time. One thing clients always look to me for is permission. But please, if you only take one thing from this, YOU are allowed to grant yourself that permission. You do not have to do and be everything.

Choose a maximum of three that are your absolute top priority. Next break these tasks down into their smallest elements and plot these in your diary for this week. Realistically think about how much time you have to do them and commit to making a small amount of progress on these tasks throughout the week.

Think about if there are any that you need help with and think about how you can go about getting some support.

Overwhelm often has its routes in our belief of how capable we believe we are. Overwhelm occurs when the task in front of us exceeds what we BELIEVE our capabilities are. It is the perception of our abilities here that matter more than our actual abilities. That’s why breaking things down really does help and make things more manageable. Just choose ONE thing to get started. You may not get everything done, and that’s ok. You did something instead of procrastinating. Celebrate your partial success!

And finally, actively look to embrace and accept imperfection. Accept the mantra that ‘done is better than perfect’ and ‘progress is better than perfection’ Ultimately is going to be more beneficial for you to do something imperfectly than not do it all. This is of course easier said than done but reminding yourself of this often and attempting a ‘good enough’ approach will take you in small steps further towards where you want to be.

I don’t think this ever goes away but understanding this better and how my brain is responding has really helped to improve things. It’s definitely a skill and one that needs to be practiced but like a muscle, it gets stronger each time. I hope some of this has helped you understand yourself better too. I’d love to know your experiences with this, so please get in touch and come and say hi on Instagram.