How to Prevent Procrastination

What is procrastination?

Procrastination is our relaxation station. 

Our inverted prioritization of what's fun,

before what must be done.

What's around becomes our fixation,

rather than goal number one being our dedication.

We show overconfidence in assuming task facilitation,

until we create a habit of inaction.

We wonder why each nation has it, 

but to delay work is a part of evolution's blueprint.

Our inaction,

lasts until our final reaction,

of being stressed with an unrealistic expectation, 

makes us discouraged to the point of debilitation.

We suffer a punishment and make a proclamation,

to never repeat the temptation, 

but it will happen again. 

After all procrastination is the design of a human.

Poem by: Michael Bruccoleri

As the poem describes, procrastination is a common tendency where people delay their tasks to a later time. This delay of action can occasionally be indefinite. The result is rushing to finish work not out of your own initiative but due to a forced deadline. Preventive steps are: 

Step 1) Defining what the issue is. Therefore, understanding what procrastination is.

Step 2) Acknowledging what types of work we procrastinate in.

Step 3) If the procrastinated work is not important, you may let it go, this is okay.

Step 4) If the work is important, you can find ways of making it approachable:

      - Advice #1: Gauge how short life is to maintain ambition

      - Advice #2: Divide the task into parts so that the overall task is manageable

      - Advice #3: Deep mindfulness or self-hypnosis to subside the discomfort of work 

      - Advice #4: Change the work environment to reduce procrastination

      - Advice #5: Find ways of seeing the task as enjoyable  

If you can define and identify procrastination in your life, you can skip to step 3. This step is to carefully judge if the task is a priority or not. If the task does not help you feel relaxed, proud, or accomplished, maybe it is best to let go of this work. Doing work that is not a priority in life can be considered procrastination, as you may be delaying pertinent work in the process. If this task is important, you can consider step 4 and make the work easier to manage. 

Step 4 of controlling procrastination: Making the task approachable

Advice #1: Gauge how short life is to maintain ambition

Do not only think about the timeline of the assignment or work. Think about the timeline of your life. If we realize that our life is not just a story that “goes by fast” but is also a story that is literally short, we would put more effort into the work we do before it is too late. 

Life is typically 80-120 years and, if you were to calculate the seconds of life, you have:

60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours x 365 days x 80 years = 2.5 billion seconds

       minute              hour                day               year            life                             life

Your life is so short that if you had 100 dollars for every second of your life, you would not be able to pay the U.S. national debt (over a trillion dollars).  Moreover, the beginning and end of your life are spent with impaired consciousness and physical/cognitive ability as we cannot remember life for the first 3.5 years, and before our death, our health may be compromised. Lastly, these 80-120 years of life are also spent with about 30-40% of our day sleeping. So, in life, you only have about 1 billion seconds of thinking, working and living.

When considering how short life is, we realize that every second is precious. This can encourage us work efficiently. If there is a crucial task that you dislike, it is best to get it done quickly so that you have more time to enjoy your 1 billion seconds of life.

Advice #2: Divide the task into parts so that the overall task is manageable

A major reason for why we do not approach our work is because our task seems too large and daunting. This is an issue that will only grow as the deadline comes closer. A way to make the task appear more approachable is to divide the task, or at least imagine how the task can be smaller than what it is. This works for all tasks in life.

For example, writing an essay seems long and tedious, but you can divide the task as:

1) Opening a Word document

2) Sitting upward

3) Typing the first word such as "the"

4) Writing sentences, which enables alternation from imagining ideas to editing.

5) Typing one paragraph at a time.

6) Final editing

If you organize this essay into bite-sized chunks of a task, you can enjoy it and eat it up like a cookie. You can set up breaks with rewards like candy and resting after you complete each division of your task. This way, you will have a very balanced, non-threatening, and potentially enjoyable fashion of progressing through your work.

A way to plan editing as a later task is to lower your standards for what you write as your first draft. If you want to write the perfect sentence as your next phrase, you will wait forever (and procrastinate), as the perfect sentence does not exist. Instead of merging steps of editing and writing, simply make a draft, know that it will not be perfect, and accept this quality. The final step of editing will eventually come, and you can finish your literary work of art.

Advice #3: Deep mindfulness or self-hypnosis to subside the discomfort of work

Hypnosis is a process of using semi-conscious thinking to guide actions. If you guide hypnosis in yourself, you are using imagination to change what your next conscious thoughts will be. A tool of self-hypnosis which I have used to prevent procrastination and make a task feel more manageable is to imagine a dystopia such as my own death.

Imagine yourself on your death bed, all the pain of life resting on that moment. Then you pass away, and your life is gone. Think specifically of the pain imagined in that situation and the sadness of losing everything that you are. Now return to your real life. Your family/friends are there, you exist, and you may feel a growing sensation of optimism within you. Importantly, the distress of doing your work may not feel as painful compared to the exceedingly agonizing story you imagined. As your task may feel less severe, you may be less likely to procrastinate.

This method of imagining dystopia makes use of the fact that pain itself (just like happiness) is not real/objective but rather imaginary/subjective. Therefore, you can alter what you experience as pain in your mind. The reason you can alter these feelings is because one factor of pain recognition is relativity. The idea of relativity signifies that your current feeling of pain is based on your previous state. If your previous state was extremely painful, then something that is less painful may be experienced as pleasurable. So, if you imagine something extremely daunting, you can then construct a much less scary perception of your task that you have to accomplish and prevent procrastination.

Advice #4: Change the work environment to reduce procrastination

If procrastination is persistent during work, you may simply change the environment or location at which you work to increase efficiency. People often think they have control over what their mind does, but our thoughts are often a reflection of our genetics, brain development, and environment throughout life. We cannot change our genetics and brain development, but we can alter our environment to control how our brain functions. If we are in an environment that our mind associates with sleeping, such as our bedroom, our thoughts may involve relaxation and leisure, and our automatic brain circadian clock may trigger sleep prematurely. Similarly, if you are in an environment that your brain associates with having fun and socializing, such as a bar or club or someone's house, your thoughts may not be focused on work but rather on people and talking. If you decide to do your work in an environment associated with public study, such as a library, you may not feel comfortable enough to relax and chat as people are studying, and your speaking may bother others. As a result, a library, by supplying discomfort, may aid in working. However, an issue with libraries is that they are public spaces. You might meet lots of friends that you can be distracted by, and you may eventually feel comfortable enough to think of leisurely thoughts. If this is a recurrent problem, you should consider studying in a private room, a staircase that is undisturbed, or any private uncomfortable area. The lack of comfort is at times useful as it gives you ambition to finish your work quickly and avoid relaxation.

Advice #5: Find ways of seeing the task as enjoyable

Make sure you desire the goal and are not forced to do it:

Efficiency in work can be fueled by external pressures, or by our own desire to accomplish the specific task. If you are forced by an external source, such as the need to pay bills, a boss at work, or an order from another person, then you may not only feel tortured by the act of working but also exhibit procrastination. As this procrastination is caused by motivation for a task arising from another individual, the way to reverse this procrastination is to make the task desirable to yourself or by changing plans to something that you appreciate. 

Let work/pride give happiness and motivation:

If there is a required task and you need personal motivation, then you should take the time to thoroughly absorb what this task entails and what it will provide in life. If you are working on an academic degree that will open doors for job opportunities, give you honour, or stability, then it should naturally drive personal motivation as your life should become happier by accomplishing this work. Thus, mindfulness about your path of study or work can make you proud of your success every step of the way, supplying motivation to prevent procrastination. 

Use habit as a tool to create happiness

If you do not have the flexibility to choose your path and know it does not make you happy, you can still construct happiness in this goal. Happiness is a perception and can therefore grow or diminish with the same stimuli. One way to create happiness in a line of work is to make it a habit. If life has a predictable routine, your body and mind will have expectations each day, and if these expectations are met, you will be happy. For example, math, cognitive tasks, and physical exercise may be difficult at first but as your body/mind becomes accustomed to it, it will expect it and crave it to be happy. When you are trying to make a habit of exercise, your body at first does not supply energy for this activity. However, over the months, you may notice your body has chronically elevated energy levels to take on exercise, and if you do not exercise, you will feel restless and want to exercise to feel relieved. This is similar to cognitive tasks: the more you do, the more your mind is subsequently prepared to accomplish, appreciate, and enjoy the work. One could say procrastination is the phase where one is developing the habit that enables our appreciation of the mental or physical task.

If habits become boring, then greater ambitions and leading others can bring motivation

When a habitual task becomes boring and dull, you can either regain interest by changing the order in which you tackle the issue, or by taking on a tougher task. This will alleviate boredom, showcase your skills, and exude pride that can prevent procrastination. Moreover, if a task becomes boring, you may have attained expertise, enabling you to teach and guide others in your community. This new role of leadership can also prevent procrastination. 

Find an alternative goal that balances success and happiness

If your current academic/career path does not stimulate you, then you could take a step back and find a new plan, job, or field of study that can spark success and that uniquely thrills you. This alternative task or plan will exhibit limited procrastination as you naturally enjoy it. What makes this task fun will depend on your genetics, brain development, history, habits, and previous successes. An easy way to gauge which path will limit procrastination is by observing which elements you enjoy learning and attaining knowledge from. Some individuals are natural listeners with deep interpersonal intelligence and might appreciate a career that requires being attentive and supportive to those in need. Those with inquiring minds may perhaps find scientific research as their passion. As you search for the profession you love and do not procrastinate in, it is important to still value the potential for success as striving for money is unfortunately a foundation of our society.

Thank you all for reading! If you have any questions, feel free to contact myself, Michael Bruccoleri, at michael.bruccoleri@mail.mcgill.ca

Stay positive, as there is less logic in being pessimistic in life when you could focus on personal and global happiness instead.