Procrastination.  My own personal form of kryptonite.  Of course I’m not alone in that.  It’s the bane of college students, employees, and organizations around the world.  It seems to be part of the human condition.  Something that’s a fundamental experience we all share.  Regardless of our culture.

I’ve tried everything to stop procrastinating.  But it always seems like I’m waiting until the last minute to get it done.  Of course over the years I’ve had to learn to procrastinate less.  I’ve learned that what worked in college doesn’t work when you work in industry.

But there are still days when I feel like I must be the foremost expert on procrastination.

So what causes procrastination, especially when we know it’s only going to cause us stress and problems down the road?

Well according to research, procrastination happens when we avoid a task.  We can be avoiding this task because we don’t like it and don’t want to be good at it (hello statistics homework!) or because we don’t want to compare ourselves to others who are good at something.

What’s more, the desire to avoid is stronger in influencing procrastination than the desire to be good at a task (in psychology lingo this is called “mastery.”)

So how do you stop procrastination?  Well based on a study by Seo (not to be confused with “search engine optimization”), there are three ways we can go about doing this.

1.  Focus on your strengths.  If you want to achieve a goal, you’re less likely to procrastinate.  It makes sense.  We’re more likely to play video games than do differential calculus.  We’re more likely to surf Facebook than write our next report for work.  (Assuming we don’t like calculus or report writing.)

2.  Understand why you’re avoiding the task.  Are you afraid of failure?  If you finish the task will something bad happen?  Is there a reason that makes you not want to start?  Sometimes not knowing what’s going to happen next is enough to get us to avoid a task.

3.  Clarify your goals.  The more we know what our goals are, the easier it is to understand why we’re avoiding the task.  It’s also easier to know how our strengths play into the task.  Plus, nothing good ever comes from mushy, ambiguous goals.

These three ideas will give you a jump start in stopping procrastination.  Especially if before you start on a project you sit down and focus on these actions.

(If you’re managing people who are chronic procrastinators, you can use these three ideas to help your employees overcome their desire to procrastinate.)

This is part 2 of a 4 part series on improving your productivity.  Photo provided by Heather Elizabeth Studios

Related Research:  Seo E.H., (2009) The Relationship of Procrastination with a Mastery Goal Versus An Avoidance Goal.  Social Behavior and Personality. 37 (7), 911-920.

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