Are you a chronic procrastinator? Do you want – or need to be more productive in your day-to day? Do you struggle to #getitdone?
I’m going to help you beat procrastination with some proven frameworks and my top 3 strategies that will make it easier for you to take action, consistently.
Prefer to listen? Here’s the episode over on my Healthy Living Podcast.
For as long as we’ve all been around, we’ve struggled with delaying, avoiding, and procrastinating on things we need to get done. Am I right, or am I right?
Yet when we’re productive, decisive and just go for it, we tend to feel satisfied and accomplished. So the question is, how can you make yourself being productive more routine? If that’s what you’re after, read on.
Procrastination: What Is It?
So, when I say procrastination, I’m referring to delaying or postponing a task or the things you know you need to get done.
In the coaching process, I explore the motivators behind someone’s actions and behaviours. Question such as “Why do you procrastinate? What is going on in your brain that causes you to avoid things you know are good, healthy or life changing?” – are asked and explored.
The answer to these can be accessed by tapping into a coaching behavioural psychology approach I use in exploring our behavioural tendencies. One of these tendencies in particular is called “time inconsistency.”
Time Inconsistency: Making Decisions
Time inconsistency is the tendency to value immediate rewards more highly than future rewards. The way I like to describe it is to imagine you have two versions of you. This can be ‘Present You’ and ‘Future You’.
When you set goals for yourself — like losing weight or eating healthily — you’re actually making plans for ‘Future You’.
You are essentially envisioning what you want your life to be like in the future. When you think about ‘Future You’, your brain can see the value in taking actions with long-term benefits.
And that’s all well and good, right? BUT what I tend to see is ‘Future You’ can set goals, but only the Present You can take action.
So when the time comes to make a decision (like should I eat the ice cream? Should I go for a run?), you are actually making a choice for your ‘Present Self’. That’s because your brain is thinking about the ‘Present You’. And we know that Present You wants instant gratification, not long-term payoff. Ice-cream? Yes please!
That’s why when you’re trying to create healthier habits or behaviours, you can’t use long-term consequences and rewards to motivate the Present You. More often than not, you’ll have a biased towards this Present version of yourself, putting a greater weight on the choice that will currently benefit you.
Procrastination: The Brain
The prefrontal cortex is the area of the brain that makes decisions. When a decision is made to procrastinate, it releases a burst of the “feel-good” chemical, dopamine.
The result of this is procrastinating can develop into an addictive type of behaviour, providing a quick ‘fix’ that is hard to kick.
I remember working with a client who came to me because of a health scare, a bad prognosis from the doctor from years of smoking. This particular client wanted to start making healthy changes but had tried and failed in the past.
This was because although she knew the consequences of smoking, she didn’t really connect with the distant future idea of the risks because it was too far off into the future.
That’s how biased the mind is. She knew her health outcomes. She wanted to make changes. Yet she also couldn’t make the choice she wanted because she was making choices in her present self. Click To Tweet
If you’ve ever had a presentation to write, you might be able to identify with this one. You’ve known about it for weeks and continued to put it off, experiencing a little bit of anxiety every time you think about it.
The day before you need to give the presentation, the future consequences of you not doing it turn into present consequences, and you end up busting it out hours before it’s due. The pain of procrastinating finally crosses into something called the ‘action line’.
Action Line
As soon as you cross into the magical action line, the pain and anxiety of the task begin to go away. In fact, being in the middle of procrastination is more painful than being in the middle of doing the actual presentation.
The issue is not doing the work, it's beginning in the first place. Click To Tweet
So this is why ‘Present You’ and ‘Future You’ are always in conflict.
‘Future You’ might WANT to be healthy and lean, or stop smoking, or eat well, but ‘Present You’ wants ice-cream.
Sure, you KNOW you want to eat healthily today to avoid putting on weight and other metabolic issues later. But the consequences like diabetes or chronic disease are years away, and they won’t happen to you, right?
That’s why I see women who feel motivated to make a change in their life, but when they wake up , without the right support, habits and behaviours, fall back into old cognitive behavioural patterns.
Thus, here are my top 3 strategies to beat procrastination and get 200% more productive:
Strategy #1: Rewards Taking Action in the Present
Brainstorm a list in how to make the benefits of the long-term choices that align with your vision or what you want to achieve more immediate.
One of the best ways to do this is a strategy known as “temptation stacking” or what Gretchen Rubin calls the “Loophole of convenience.”
The strategy suggests that you stack, or piggyback a behaviour that is good for you in the long-run with a behaviour that feels good in the immediate term.
Here’s What To Do:
Only do the thing you love WHILST DOING/ IF YOU DO the thing you procrastinate on.
Some examples are:
- Only listen to music you love while exercising.
- Only watch your favourite show whilst ironing or eating a healthy meal
- Only eat at your favourite restaurant/takeaway when conducting your monthly business meeting with a difficult colleague/client.
Strategy #2. Make Consequences More Immediate
This means making the cost of procrastination in the here and now, rather than in the future.
Some examples include:
- Setting workouts with a friend, so if you miss one, you look like an a*hole.
- Place a bet. If you don’t do what you promise then your bet goes to a charity you hate. This idea, originally heard from Tim Ferriss, is to put some skin in the game and create a new consequence that happens if you don’t do the action in the Present.
How to Stop Procrastinating
Strategy #3. Be Future-Proactive
Creating a proactive environment to influence your future actions ahead of time is a powerful way to success.
For example, you can try and stop overeating by portion controlling food in individual containers/boxes rather than in one container or tub. This works well with ice-cream!
Other examples are:
- Deleting social media apps from your phone if you want to stop getting sucked into the vortex of aimless scrolling.
- Lowering the likelihood of watching crappy tv by hiding your TV in a closet or getting rid of it altogether. (I haven’t had a tv in years!)
- Set and forget an automatic transfer of funds to your holiday saving account.
These strategies are powerful ways to override this cognitive biased loop and see a change in your productivity when done consistently.
If you know consistency is an issue, or you want a downloadable Procrastination Guide and step-by-step approach to put it into practice, my Metabolic Membership gives you instant access to the tools you need to start making and seeing changes immediately.
Now, I would love to hear from you, do you procrastinate? How do you get on the productivity train? Let me know by commenting in the comment section below!
With all my love and admiration,
XO
Anna