There are a lot of people that will tell you how to overcome procrastination. The problem is that most if not all of these experts work with an audience in mind that are mild to moderate procrastinators. What about you? Do you have a case of extreme procrastination? If not in every thing we do but one or two part of our life. In our life we all have a garage that needs to be cleaned. The simple thought of this task will send shivers down our spine, the gush of negative emotions will leave us in a paralytic state hampering other tasks as well. There are a lot of ways to deal with procrastination such as organise, plan, chunk, split, dice etc… but these will not work till you overcome from the paralytic state your mind goes into every time you even think about that particular task.
One of the best tips to overcome this is to add a reward after the completion of a small part of the task. We often tell our kids to eat their vegies before they get their desserts, yet we don’t use this technique ourselves. I know this seems to be a hackneyed tip and many people have suggested this and it did not work. It will work if you do know why it works and I will give you a specific plan to use it.
To understand why it works, first we look at how the opposite works. Say you come home and have to park your car in the driveway because the garage is not clean. This gets you thinking about cleaning the garage, the mind is now in stress with the thought of cleaning. You walk inside of your house, still thinking about the garage, the mind is stressed and is thinking of ways to relieve this stress. You think “I’ll have a snack before I start cleaning”, BANG the mind puts the thought of cleaning on the back burner. Now while eating you switch on the T.V. to “get current with the news”. The thought of cleaning is completely forgotten, after the news it is reruns of M.A.S.H., then it is too late to clean, “I’ll do it tomorrow”. Notice now what message these actions sends to your mind. The mind was thinking of ways to get rid of the thought of cleaning and what have you done? You have relieved it and added a reward of the pleasure of food and television. Your mind is very happy now it will start associating the process of procrastination with rewards. Think about how many times you have done this and then think of how strong the association that the mind has made is. This association is so strong that the simple thought of a reward after the task will not convince the mind, it knows it will get a reward anyways.
Instead do this; you walk into your house walk straight to your garage. Just pick any random tool you find lying around, dust it and put it in its proper place. If there is some other tool in the place where this tool is supposed to be, pick it up and throw it away. Don’t worry about its place right now you are concerned with only one tool and its proper place. Say, even if you have 1000 such tools, you have completed 0.1% or 0.001th part of the task. This may not seem a lot but – if nothing else from this whole article, remember this one thing – 0.001 is still greater than zero. Do these small tasks, they may not be very important but they are easy and part of the task anyways. If you need to write a report open your word processor and open a new file, give it a name. If you need to start exercising, look up the number of a gym or a personal trainer and keep it near the phone. Now go in and then have a snack and/or watch television. Believe me you will enjoy them more. Notice the association the mind now makes, the relatively small and easy task is rewarded with food and television. Do the same thing again and again, remember how many times the opposite was rewarded and it will take time to break those associations and make new ones. You are not making any drastic changes; you are essentially doing the same things with just a small time of work sandwiched in between. After a few repetitions, once the negative emotions related to the task have abated you are ready for the next phase in learning to overcome procrastination and getting things done.
