How to Work Around a Procrastination Habit

Procrastination is most often a way of dealing with anxiety, and it can backfire. One tip is to start with little or less important jobs. And be gentle on yourself.

Mix fear or boredom with rebellion and you put things off. You might tell yourself you need a break and indulge in some smartphone surfing — then hear the little voice in your head saying, “Is this how grownups spend their time?” The self-criticism only perpetuates your fear or boredom and rebellion.

Procrastination is most often a way of dealing with anxiety that backfires. Putting off a task that makes you anxious perpetuates the anxiety over more hours and days. Some research suggests that procrastinators get worse sleep and feel tired in the daytime, worsening the cycle of procrastination and amplifying anxiety.

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Do you keep waiting until you “have time,” but no amount of time is enough? Do you get angry and blame other people for saddling you with all this work? Are you afraid you’ll do a bad job?

Facing those feelings might help you realize it’s time to get started. But exactly how? Instead of perpetuating your anxiety, try doing another less dreaded but still useful task.

The philosopher John Perry calls this approach “structured procrastination.” In fact, he has confessed that he wrote “The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing” to avoid his duties as a professor.

Instead of putting something off, Perry suggests writing a list of tasks ranked by importance, all of which are worthwhile. Do tasks near the bottom when you feel the urge to delay.

You might break a big project into sub-projects and rank those, then choose to do the less important or less scary ones first.

Set your own deadlines, and don’t strive for perfection right away if you have high standards. This lets you get the job done, and then you can later improve the parts of your work that require perfection. Much of the time people procrastinate over tasks that don’t require brilliance.

When Perry makes “to-do” lists of tasks for the day, he may include “do-nots” that are favorite time-wasters, such as reading Facebook or Twitter until after lunch.” Checking off the “do-not” gives you a psychological lift.

You can also set rules that limit your time-wasters. Perry’s rule is to surf online only 20 minutes before his next class begins or when his laptop is unplugged and has only 10 minutes of battery power left.

Sometimes procrastination helps you weed your to-do list. Some tasks vanish — your mother-in-law might go to a mechanic if you conveniently forget to call her back for a week to discuss her car troubles.

Reward yourself. If you have tackled a particularly horrible task, give yourself a reward like going for a walk or calling a friend.

Practice self-compassion. It’s common for procrastinators to beat themselves up as lazy and selfish, when they’re just dealing with anxiety in a way that doesn’t work. If you can talk kindly to yourself, you might be less anxious and discover you can do the job more quickly and successfully than you guessed.

If you’re stalling because you lack skills or find a task so boring you can’t focus, try to delegate it to someone else. Play to your strengths and passions and sidestep weaknesses. Find helpers or collaborators who fill in your gaps.

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