Starting: How I Stop Myself From Procrastinating
An Approach to Procrastinating Less
Procrastination is a life long habit I've struggled with—a considerable source of self-loathing and frustration. Most of the time, I'm a functional procrastinator able to juuuust squeeeeeze by and deliver. It might surprise some people who know me to hear this. Ha! Fooled ya good! (Or, did I?)
Whether a project interests me or not, procrastination can be an issue. Over the years, my frustrations have led to many (usually procrastinatory) jaunts through the world of self-help. Most of the advice is utter bollocks, written by someone who seems to have never suffered from procrastination, or else it didn't work for me. This article looks at one method which has worked for me.
Typical advice to stop procrastination centers around "just doing it." Get on with it! Which of course, is valid, but utterly useless for those trapped deep in a procrastination-induced mental cesspit of self-loathing. Others advise to, "break it into small pieces," (like doing Pomodoros), or to "set priorities." Yup. Sounds great. Delayed rewards are another method often highlighted as very effective. They're also thoroughly ineffective for me; I'll stare at a blank wall unrewarded rather than ever get started. These tips are not coming from chronic procrastinators. If it were so easy, I'd have just done it! It's all a bit like telling someone who's depressed to "just be happy!" Brilliant.
My procrastination stems primarily from my perfectionism. Rather than get started on a project, I'm often self-sabotaged by some overwhelming aim for perfectionism and the associated fear of failure, resulting in severe procrastination. In "The Now Habit," Niel Fiore describes a procrastination loop where, "perfectionistic demands lead to → fear of failure → procrastination → self-criticism → anxiety and depression → loss of confidence → greater fear of failure which leads to → stronger need to use procrastination as a temporary escape" (Ch. 1, pg. 31). Bingo. That's me!
"The procrastination habit catches people in a vicious cycle: get overwhelmed, feel pressured, fear failure, try harder, work longer, feel resentful, lose motivation, and then procrastinate. The cycle starts with the pressure of being overwhelmed and ends with an attempt to escape through procrastination. As long as you’re caught in the cycle, there is no escape. You can’t even enjoy the recuperative and creative benefits of guilt-free leisure time. Suddenly, any time spent on play—and even time spent on more enjoyable work—feels like an uneasy shirking from what you should be doing."
-- Neil Fiore in The Now Habit (Introduction, pg. 12)
I set the bar high at some self-defined level of perfect that is often overwhelming and unobtainable. This leads to fear that I'll fail—so why even bother starting at all? Starting can be quite difficult, but, and this is the crux of it, once I've started, the hours tick by at a blistering pace of which most was spent in Flow. Starting is the challenge. Starting repeatedly every day is an even greater challenge.
A while ago I came across a workable solution in a book, "A Mind for Numbers" by Oakland University professor of engineering Barbara Oakley, which helped me get started more frequently. In the book, Oakley suggests to "get into the Flow by focusing on process, not product." She describes a product as an outcome (or output): the project you're supposed to be working on, the report you want to finish, or the feature you want to ship. Whereas a process is a habit or a system of actions over a period of time. Oakley explains that, "to prevent procrastination, you want to avoid concentrating on product. Instead, your attention should be on building processes—habits—that coincidentally allow you to do the tasks that need to be done" (A Mind for Numbers, Ch. 6, Loc. 1431). Rather than focusing on the big project you need to finish, focus on setting a process for working on the big project.
"Avoid focusing on the product. The product is what triggers the pain that causes you to procrastinate. Instead, focus on the process, the small chunks of time needed over days or weeks, to [complete your report or ship your feature]. Who cares whether you finished in any one session? The whole point instead is that you calmly put forth your best effort for a short period—the process."
-- Barbara Oakley in A Mind for Numbers (Ch. 6, Loc. 1434)
What has helped me is to set up a simple schedule with little commitment. Each day the schedule is mostly the same. For two hours, from 10:00 to 12:00, I work on one thing. Then, after lunch, from 13:30 to 15:00, I work on another thing. I try to place no other expectations on myself other than to be at my computer at those times focused on what I had planned to do. I'm not there to work on a product, I'm just showing up on time to put in a bit of effort.
"Focus on starting. Your task is to get to the starting place on time. The advantage of this is that your “to do” list needs only one top priority item—“When is the next time I can start?” Replace all thoughts about finishing with thoughts about when, where, and on what you can start."
-- Neil Fiore in The Now Habit (Ch. 6, pg. 125)
This reframing from product to process, where the only obligation is to start for a short duration of time lets me refocus myself away from worrying about delivering the perfect end result. As part of the process, say, a two hour period of focused work, I tell myself that all I have to do is work for a short while. In this way, I can set my expectations for myself low. There's no big project. Only these two hours. Just do a little bit, no judgement. Don't worry about finishing anything. Everything is just a draft.
"By focusing on process rather than product, you allow yourself to back away from judging yourself (Am I getting closer to finishing?) and allow yourself to relax into the flow of the work."
-- Barbara Oakley in A Mind for Numbers (Ch. 6, Loc. 1487)
It's much easier to do thirty minutes of work than it is to think of working on the whole project. Setting a low bar makes it easier to get started, and to then keep starting every day. It lets me convince myself that there is no big project for long enough to get over the hurdle of starting on the task. This little opening is usually enough to get started. Then a magical change occurs. Once I start, and keep starting as part of the process, momentum begins to build and I can keep going. The process then helps me keep the momentum.
Just as importantly, focusing on the process rather than the product also sets a schedule for when to stop. Without this break, my momentum tends to escalate towards mania, and soon enough it's 03:00 AM and I can't stop. Having a process codified in a schedule helps me start, but also keeps me from burning out in a short burst of epic productivity, thus preserving the starting momentum so that next time it's easier to get started again.
"Think small. Do not aim to finish a book, write letters, complete your income tax, or to work continuously for even four hours. Aim for thirty minutes of quality, focused work."
-- Neil Fiore in The Now Habit (Ch. 6, pg. 125)
Setting out a process with the expectations set low is key. Only two hours? Yes. But, if I'd been procrastinating instead, it'd be zero hours. Two hours is infinitely more than zero. Set the bar low so that you can get started. Don't let your inner critic make you feel like you need to add a lot of things. Start with just one. Do one thing each day. The magic happens when you do it each day. As Fiore mentions, "Keep starting. Finishing will take care of itself. When it is time to start the last thirty minutes that will finish the project, that too will be an act of starting—the start of the conclusion of your current project, as well as the beginning of your next."
Like most procrastination advice, it's brittle. While it's one of the best procrastination busting methods I've tried, it's not perfect. The initial start, the seed to build the momentum is still fickle. And, things go to shit quickly: I've found it especially difficult to resume once I've fallen out of the process.
For example, this year, I had a good process codified in a schedule with lots of breathing room. I spent two hours in the morning working through a few courses on Coursera, and a two hour slot after lunch to focus on coding on a project. From mid-January through mid-March things were well and I had built enough momentum to keep starting each day. Then I picked up a week long freelance consulting gig. The gig was novel, interesting, and small enough, and I had enough momentum going that procrastination wasn't an issue. But immediately after finishing the gig, my process had been thrown off for a week and it all fell apart. It took me another month of on-and-off procrastination and struggles getting started before I was able to get back into a process-schedule. Thinking about all that wasted time and pointless self-loathing makes me crazy. Ugh. When I lose my momentum, the cycle resets and I begin again from zero.
Although this approach to tackling my procrastination habit isn't perfect and I've experienced false-starts using it, the method of setting myself a schedule and focusing on the process rather than the overwhelming end-product helps get me to a point where it often becomes possible to "just do it." Focusing on process sets me up to "Get on with it!" It gets me to a place where that advice is finally not so insufferable. It helps clear away my fear of failure because there is no space available in which to fail.
From my past procrastination-fueled traipsing across the Internet, there seem to be quite a few of us procrastinators around. Are you one of them? What tricks have you used to get you started?
This article is part of my 30 days / 30 articles challenge where I've attempted to write thirty articles within thirty days.