Procrastination

In my experience, lots of people claim to be procrastinators who really aren’t. This epidemic of false procrastinators makes it harder for us real-deal procrastinators to find help or a supportive community.

Seriously, procrastination seems to be one of the most talked about yet still taboo problems in our world today. Talking about how you stayed up all last night to start on a project is almost a badge of honor, but is rarely true, at least in my experience. People who have a much more severe procrastination issue can use this attitude to their advantage, talking about their stories of procrastination while others understand it as merely a joke. I myself am a serial procrastinator. I find it extremely difficult to start projects or complete them within a timely schedule. Instead, I often push off the responsibility until either the last minute or when I’m so overcome by guilt that I complete it in a rush. I realize as well as anyone that this is not a sustainable method of working, so I, like many others, have sought out methods to curb my procrastination. However, most of these methods have not worked for me. I can’t schedule out all the work I need to do ahead of time, and I’m terrible at splitting up a task into smaller bites.

The failures and stress I’ve endured have envigorated me once again to find a new way to deal with this problem of mine; to find a custom tailored solution that will actually work. I’ve settled on a not-so-rigourous solution that has greatly helped me. While my problem is not completely solved, I have alleviated it a great deal and can now do much more than I could previously, and without the unnecessary stress that comes along with intense procrastination.

The very first thing I do when I have a task or assignment or other thing I want to complete is sit down. I try to write down all of my ideas for this task on paper. This helps reduce stress, as you’re ensuring that none of the volatile initial ideas are able to be forgotten by the time you get to the task, but it also helps with breaking down the problem into many smaller tasks that have to be completed. When brainstorming this way, I find that I already have a pretty good idea of how the problem should be broken up, it just helps me reach those ideas and understand them better.

Next comes the hard part: setting deadlines. I am someone who gets overwhelmed by a large number of deadlines all in a row, even if they are all for the same larger task. Instead, I find that having one large deadline near the end and having smaller milestones/checkpoints throughout is much easier to manage. I can pick and choose which tasks I want to complete at what time without throwing off my whole schedule, and I am able to keep on a steady pace with sub-task completion.

Note: when I say “schedule” I don’t mean an intensely organized calendar where every minute of your day is planned for. I moreso mean having certain dates in mind, like the halfway point or a point when you’d like to have most of the project done. This helps immensely with not feeling overwhelmed and actually sticking to your deadlines.

Lastly, I make sure to keep track of everything I do. I am already the type of OCD-brained person who needs to have all thoughts and actions thoroughly documented, but this is also useful for keeping track of what you have completed and what is still left to be done.

I also try to remind myself that it’s okay to not be perfect at this. Us procrastinators are simply wired differently than those who are always able to perfectly stick to schedules, but we can adjust our own workstyles to help ourselves out. On the road to procrastination recovery, delays are bound to happen. The best we can do is continue trying and making things.