How to Stop Procrastinating Right Now

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: That is, once again, the Wimps — one of my favorite bands — with a song, “Procrastination”, because that’s what we’re talking about today.

I’ve been meaning to make this podcast for you for about two years now. But yes, the struggle is real. I’m just kidding — not really. But I, too, have struggled with procrastination over the years. I know it’s a very real thing. A lot of you are struggling with this. I wanted to spend our time together today sharing the tips, and tricks, and tools, and ideas that I have learned over the years that have helped me, and that I routinely teach my clients so that you get control over your time and energy too.

If this is your first time listening, hello and welcome! I am Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby. I’m the founder and clinical director of Growing Self Counseling & Coaching. I’m a licensed psychologist, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and a board-certified coach, and draw from all of these things to help you create love, happziness, and success. This podcast is just me tossing out bread crumbs and bottles into the ocean that are hopefully helpful to you on your journey. 

I always try to craft my topics about things that I’m hearing from you, my listeners, that would be helpful and important to you. So thank you, everyone, who has reached out through Instagram, or Facebook, or through our website growingself.com. Quick heads up to let you know — we’re going to be starting to experiment with something a little different that I think would be pretty interesting. In addition to the kind of informational format of the show or the interview format of the show, I’m also going to be answering some listener questions on the air. 

If you have something that is on your mind, and you would like to talk through it with me on a podcast sometime, I invite you to get in touch on Instagram, @drlisamariebobby, or hello@growingself.com are easy ways. Just raise your hand, let me know what’s on your mind, and perhaps you and I can talk things through. That is an exciting new thing and I’ll be interested to see what we can collectively create with that. 

But let’s just dive right in. Let’s not procrastinate, shall we? Let’s dive into our topic together today. Because procrastination is a very real issue for many people, and it doesn’t just lead to issues where you’re not getting things done or you look around your house, and you see the stuff or the unopened mail — those are minor annoyances. It, over time though, can lead to a lot of bigger problems — anxiety — when you start to feel really overwhelmed and stressed and anxious about all this stuff piling up that is starting to be important. Maybe, there’s a tax document and a pile of mail that you need to do something about. 

I can also, I think — lead to people feeling really badly about themselves after a while, almost a depression-ney kind of shame experience where you’re like, “What is wrong with me that I can’t get my act together and do these things?” Then, if that does spiral into a capital D depression, that leads to exhaustion and avoidance, and even less likely that you will get things done. 

It can also lead to real consequences either in your job if you’re not meeting deadlines or leaving things till the last minute. After a while, people will get annoyed with you. It can also lead to issues in your relationship, particularly if your partner is asking you to do things or follow through with things that are personally important to them. I think it’s easy to forget that actions, tasks that may seem small, simple things — unloading the dishwasher when you said you’re going to, running an errand, taking care of something around the house — over time, those things can become kind of heavy with meaning. 

It feels to us like it’s just about the task or the thing, but it can start to feel to your partner like it is a symbolic representation of your feelings towards them, often interpreted as that you don’t care about them. It can lead to a lot of negativity and bad feelings in relationships. For all of these reasons, and in addition, of course, to you just feeling happy and content to kind of in control of yourself in your life, it is important that we talk together about procrastination.

In looking around, there are sort of standard-issue pieces of advice about how to deal with procrastination. I think that they do all have some validity. But I want to take it a little bit deeper today because in my experience — and I am saying this as somebody who, especially when I was younger, really did struggle with this. I would try all of these organizational systems — I read the books, and the whatever — I tried all the things, and they never worked for me. 

I interpreted this, in my 20s, it’s just another side of my personal failings. But I think as I’ve gotten older and done more work on myself, I’ve come to realize that there is a reason why people tend to procrastinate, and often it goes a little bit deeper than one would think. I think we can assume that it’s about strategies and habits, and so on and so forth. I do think to a degree that that can be true. 

But without really opening the door — the basement, walking into the basement, and understanding really why, in a compassionate and fully aware sort of way, it can be difficult to use the tools and incorporate the habits. That’s where I would like us to go today. I wanted to start this conversation, though, with just a compassion-building exercise. If this is the thing for you, I’m sure you’re well aware of the emotional toll that it takes. 

Also, if you are listening to this because you are partnered with somebody whose procrastination is driving you insane, it is also, I think, important for you to have some understanding and compassion for their emotional experience because the struggle is real, and it can be easy to get mad at yourself or get mad at your partner when they’re doing these things, “Like what’s the big deal? Just do the thing, and you won’t feel bad anymore.” 

But it tends to sort of snowball. The very best and most hilarious description of the procrastination cycle that I came across was from a really cool blog post, actually — by a civilian. He was not a licensed mental health professional, but he’s still incredibly insightful and very funny. His name is Tim Urban. A while back, he did a piece called The Dark Playground on his blog called Wait But Why. I will link to it somewhere in the post to this podcast. 

But anyway — I’ll just read you a little snippet from his work. Here, he’s talking about the emotional depths of what happens with somebody who is in a habit of procrastinating, has put things off, and that they eventually will enter the dark playground. It is a place every procrastinator knows well. It’s a place where leisure activities happen at times when leisure activities are not supposed to be happening. The fun you have in the dark playground isn’t actually fun because it’s completely unearned, rather, and the air is filled with guilt, anxiety, self-hatred, and dread. 

Sometimes, the rational decision-making part of you puts his foot down and refuses to let you waste time doing normal leisure things. Since the other side of this — he’s calling the “Instant Gratification Monkey” — wants to keep distracting you and won’t let you work. You find yourself in a bizarre purgatory of weird activities where everyone loses. If you are a habitual procrastinator, I’m sure you can relate to that. 

It’s like there’s these two sides of you — there’s this part of you that is screaming at you, “Just do the things, you know what you have to do. What’s wrong with you?” But there’s this other part that’s like that, “I’m going to do this, I want to do that, I want to…”, something else… Then, he has a third character in this narrative called the “Panic Monster” which emerges as you get closer and closer to a deadline, or begin experiencing real or threatened consequences of procrastination. 

Then, that sort of motivates you into this big flurry of action where you wind up — yes — doing some things usually in a half-assed manner. You kind of get it done, but it wasn’t really good enough, and it was incredibly stressful, and people are still annoyed with you anyway. For a full description of The Dark Playground and the emotional toll that procrastination can take, I would encourage you to visit Wait But Why. It’s worth your time. 

This is a difficult place to be in. I think one of the big well — there are many, I think, deeper reasons why people can’t do this. But I think in my experience, I have isolated it to a few. I’m just going to talk through these one at a time. As I do, I would like for you to just kind of listen and think about which of these might fit best for you. It may be that there are a few of these that fit well for you. The answer is often multidimensional and complex. 

But one of the biggest lessons for me, and something that I have actually since coached many clients through is the discovery that these things that I was procrastinating and putting off and feeling badly about were actually things that I wasn’t good at, that I didn’t enjoy, and I really was trying to make myself do things that I shouldn’t have been trying to do in the first place many times. This would be related to different aspects of work, oftentimes, or even stuff around the house, or in my personal life. 

I just want to invite you to consider if the things that you have on this giant list that you’re telling yourself you should be doing, could potentially be things that you don’t enjoy, that you don’t value, that you don’t really have an interest in. Maybe, you’re getting societal messages that are telling you that you should be valuing or doing these things, but then you actually, legitimately, do not care and that you don’t feel like completing these tasks is going to be particularly meaningful or helpful in your life, and you’re not good at them, you don’t really know how to do them, it’s not stuff that you enjoy, and perhaps to give yourself permission to not do them. 

I just want you to consider what could change about your life and your relationship to these tasks, and also your relationship to yourself. If instead of kind of beating yourself up and trying to make yourself do things that you don’t want to do, and that you probably shouldn’t be doing — and accept that. What doors could potentially open up for you? If you’re like, “Yeah, I’m actually not going to do that.” 

Let’s just pause here for a second. Let that sink in. You may be feeling a surge of anxiety around like, “But these things need to get done!” Maybe, they do need to get done. But maybe you should not be the one to do them. It could turn into a very different exercise in problem-solving if you just kind of shifted into this mindset around, “I am not going to do these things. How could they potentially get done anyway?” 

This could turn into all kinds of creative new possibilities for you. For example, maybe you have strengths in an area. There are things that you are good at and that you do enjoy. When you do them, it feels like flow. It is like, “This is why I am here, and I’m having the best time right now.” And you don’t procrastinate with those things. They’re like fun — you move towards them instead of away from them. 

As you get clearer about what those things are, and how those things would bring value into the lives of other people, you, now, have a poker chip that you could potentially trade with somebody else. There are people — and I’m just going to use this as a quick example — there are magical creatures in the world that I sort of view as this semi-unicorn, pegasus creature, sparkles, that enjoys things like administrative tasks, bills, opening mail, organizing things. They exist, they exist. You might be one of those people. 

Perhaps, as you’re listening to this, many procrastinators tend to be on the more creative side of the spectrum. Maybe, you are really good at painting things, making music, coming up with new ideas, rearranging furniture. It’s possible to develop relationships with other people where they can have a good time coming into your life and helping you do things that you can’t really do that well. In exchange, of course for your energy, and talent, and abilities, and the value that you can bring to their life doing the things that would help them. 

That may not be intrinsically part of their kind of skill set and value set. It could be even simple swaps with your partner. If you’re getting into power struggles around certain tasks at home, seeing, “Okay, I don’t procrastinate around these things. These are things I can get done. I can be in charge of XYZ. You do that over there.” 

I think the central point is that not everyone is good at everything. Actually, nobody is good at everything. The sooner that we can move into a state of acceptance around that, and spend your time and energy really identifying your strengths, the things you do enjoy, and figuring out how to do more of those — a lot of this is instantly going to get easier for you. That would be strategy number one, is to swap or even outsource if you have the means to do it. 

I felt terribly guilty for years and years about the idea of having a house cleaner come in periodically. I had all these mental narratives around that “I can’t, that feelings around it. I tell you what — I am not a fabulous housekeeper. I aspire to be. I look at things and I’m like, “Man, someone will need to clean that.” I see it, but in terms of my time, and I’m going 900 miles an hour, and not really good at it anyway. 

To have a support in that area has been incredibly helpful for me. I had to work through a lot of guilt. And yes, of course, there’s the money component. I understand that not everybody can do that. But if there are things that you can just cross off your list and get some help with, do it. 

Another piece of this that is very, very common for many people… Maybe, it is something that you need to do. It is actually your job to do. Generally speaking — like big picture — it is stuff that you’re good at, it is stuff that you enjoy doing, it is within your kind of sphere of talent, and value, and ability, and it’s also difficult to do. 

I know that many of my clients who are in creative positions or positions where their role is, even if it’s not an artistic kind of creative position — I’m thinking of a developer, marketing people, project managers, product managers… In my group, we honestly work with a lot of people in the tech industries. Their role is really to come up with ideas and be solving complex problems with lots of different moving parts that might involve a lot of different people. 

Or even I know for myself, sometimes, I love to write. I enjoy it, I think that I can do it somewhat well when I put in the time. Cognitively though, any of these activities are very cognitively demanding. They are cognitively heavy work. It takes a lot of mental effort to do these things. It may surprise you to know that your body, your physical body — okay, we all know we have physical bodies, and they burn calories. You have energy that powers your body. 

Your brain, particularly when it is working hard, consumes more calories and more energy than anything else in your body which might surprise you because we think about all these moving parts, right? But it’s actually your brain. I bring that up to reinforce and validate the fact that, sometimes, when we have these big complicated things to create or problems to solve, we can feel the enormity of that load in our brains, and it’s like anticipating lifting something extremely heavy — just this like, “Ugh!” 

I think what also goes along with that is that some things, whether they are cognitive in nature or even physical projects, can be quite complex. They have many different aspects of them. It looks like, on the surface, a fairly simple task like, “Okay, I’m going to paint the wall in the bedroom.” Something like that. It’s like a 97-step process. 

You have to get to the paint store to look at colors, and then bring the colors home, and then take them to the wall, and then look at them, and then argue about them, and then take half of them down — that. Then, you have to get the paint, and then you have to get the stuff, and then when… When are you going to do that? Anyway, it’s just like everything is complicated. 

What happens is that we begin to feel the bigness of the project, either the all of the physical steps, and it starts to feel overwhelming, or the cognitive load of it. It turns into a situation where we can begin subliminally, subconsciously dreading the process. This sort of anticipatory dread about how hard it’s going to be — even though intellectually, you want to do it, you enjoy doing it, and maybe, you want the outcome of having done it. 

When it comes to — if you’re feeling like, “Yes, this is what I do.” When it comes to the cognitive pieces of this, what I learned is that with the cognitive work, it is extremely important to do a few things. First of all, get really clear about your natural energy cycles. For example, I tend to do my best work. If I’m going to do something very cognitively heavy, I need to do it in the morning. For some people, their brains are not working at full capacity at five o’clock in the morning when I’m ready to write stuff and think about stuff. 

They are at like five o’clock at night is when they turn on. But I think gaining that awareness about yourself, “Is it the middle of the day? Is it late at night? Is it in the morning?” Then, planning your cognitively heavy work during those times. That is one really important strategy right there. In addition to that, to have a dedicated chunk, big chunk of time to do deep work, particularly if it is cognitive in nature. 

I work with so many people who are in roles where they’re managing people, or they’re guiding teams, or they’re part of a team. I’ve had clients show me their work calendars before because they’re telling me that they’re procrastinating and have this big project to do. Then, they show me their work calendar and their fragmented days. They’ll have 10 meetings in a day, and they’re like, “I just can’t make myself do this thing.” I’m thinking, “You might need an hour to settle in to even getting mentally prepared to doing this work.” 

I think that people tend to underestimate the amount of time that they need to enter into this — I think it’s almost like an altered state of consciousness in some ways to do really deep, creative work, or intellectually demanding work — but like a three-hour chunk, a five-hour chunk. I don’t know what that might look like in your life. But if you’re struggling to get those big things done, I would honestly recommend that you look at your calendar and see what you can do to move things around so that you have time and space that is protected and dedicated to those very heavy cognitive tasks. 

That’s what I began doing — blocking my calendar. I have different kinds of activities on different days. I do have days where I have meetings from morning to night — and it’s fine. I have to do it, and I enjoy talking to people and having meetings, and having sessions. But I can’t do that on days that I have to do things like make podcasts for you. I can’t focus deeply enough to be able to create that for you, so I have to have days that are like my days to do creative work. I wonder what might happen for you if you tried that strategy. 

Also, you’re responsible for setting boundaries. People aren’t going to set boundaries for you. But to be able to communicate those needs to your team, to your boss, say, “Hey, I have this big project to do, so I am going to be unavailable for the next four hours. I’m going to produce great results for you in the meantime.” Also, it’s important that when you do have this protected time to be setting boundaries with yourself, and right now, I’m thinking of the notifications that come in or you see something on your phone, and 20 minutes later… 

The protecting yourself from those intrusive kinds of notifications or interruptions that can shift you out of that deep work. In addition, though, and this is where we have to get very serious, is to identify the usual suspects that are — in Tim Urban’s words, “part of The Dark Playground”, and knowing yourself well enough to know that you cannot actually look at YouTube or whatever for five minutes even though that’s what the little voice in your mind is telling you. 

I had to implement a new rule with myself that when I go into the office, first thing in the morning, I go in with my coffee. I had to start bringing my phone in with me because I would easily spend an hour just scrolling through crap on my phone during the most productive, high-energy time of day that I had. If I was going to get something done, it was going to be at that time — just noticing that pattern and being so annoyed with myself. 

It’s like these small habits that you can develop. I think you’ve heard on previous podcasts that I did about this idea of a keystone habit, which is the one little thing that you can implement that can lead to a chain reaction of other positive habits. For me, that is not bringing my phone into my office early in the morning. It sounds like the silliest little thing, but it’s really that one keystone habit. I don’t have my phone, so I sit down and I think about what I should actually be doing, and I’m much more likely to do it. 

I would encourage you to reflect on what your kryptonite is and find some keystone habits that will help you set some boundaries around it. Some of the other usual suspects when it comes to reasons for procrastination and things that you can do to manage them. I know we talk about perfectionism sometimes. I’m sure that that’s a word that everybody is familiar with. I sort of take perfectionism to mean other things as a — one of the many disciples of Brené Brown. I loved her concept of perfectionism, and I want to share it with you. 

She sort of referred to perfectionism as being a tendency to base your self-worth on what other people think of your work. So that when we are being perfectionistic, we are really working to get approval and recognition from others. We should probably talk about that in-depth on another podcast at some point, but that’s kind of my working model of perfectionism right now. That is different than the concept of excellence of doing a good job, of striving to do something well. 

I think that that is okay if we get feelings of satisfaction from that — to be able to think, “I did a good job, I did that well.” I certainly don’t want to take that away from you, and I don’t want you to think that if you are trying really hard to do a good job, you’re being perfectionistic because that might not be true. I respect people that do excellent work. I’m sure that you do too, and probably aspire to be one of those people. 

Where this begins to cause problems and lead to procrastination is when you, I, we tend to become so over-detailed and start broadening the scope of the project, and incorporating all kinds of things that maybe don’t need to be part of the project or the thing we have to do, and begin to become attached to very specific and possibly over-ambitious outcomes that lead us to feel that overwhelmed feeling and dread the process of something as simple as reorganizing the kitchen like, “Man, my drawers are a mess. I need to reorganize this kitchen.” 

If you’re not careful, can turn into a full day of tearing everything out of the cabinets, and having to take a bunch of stuff to Goodwill, and re-papering all of the drawers, and, “We should probably get new organizers.” “While we’re here, why don’t we just repaint the place, and I should probably get new dishes.” I mean, it just explodes into all of these different things. I think that a real helpful goal here is can be to narrow our focus and notice when we’re doing scope creep in any of the things that we undertake. 

I know that I have a tendency to do this, and I know many of my clients have too. I do think it’s attached to that noble intention of wanting to do a really good and thorough job — and that’s great, but not if it prevents you from actually doing anything. If it sort of snowballs into many other ideas, and you can’t plant flowers in the front yard before you figure out your whole concept for landscaping. We’re probably going to put a new addition on the house at some point, so you have to figure out what we’re doing that first when you could have just gone out and spent approximately 20 minutes planting some Iris bulbs, and it would have been fine. 

To kind of have this mental jujitsu where you can help yourself stay focused on the one small task that would bring some value in the short term, and it would make things better than they currently are. Your life might be incrementally better if you literally spent 20 minutes just reorganizing your silverware drawer. But you have to have a mental boundary that stops you from going further than that. That is just another cognitive strategy that I’ve noticed can be really helpful for people — is actually making the bar lower, and much more narrow and focused.

Another neat trick is that if you have something that you need to do, and it is one of those smaller projects — ones that are easy to put off, but that probably should be done every once in a while — is to set a timer. “I am going to rearrange some of the silverware drawers to the best of my ability for the next 10 minutes. Siri, set a timer for 10 minutes.” Do your thing, and when the timer goes off, you stop. Your silverware drawer is halfway better, and it’s still better than it was, and you have done something. 

I think setting almost those little challenges with yourself is a way to gamify procrastination, and actually get yourself to do some of the things that you have been putting off in addition to finding a place and time to do them. That is kind of flowing us into another reason why people often procrastinate is because they have not developed what we clinically call “executive functioning skills”. This could be for a variety of reasons. 

Many of us were never specifically taught “executive functioning skills”. We are sent to school, and given assignments, and do these things. But I never had a teacher show me, “Okay, here’s a planner; here’s how to use a calendar; here is how to manage your time in such a way that you can actually get these things done.” We’re just given a syllabus, and like, “Good luck with that.” 

I think that there’s this assumption in the educational system, but also in many occupational environments that we know how to do that. For many people, that is simply not true. They weren’t taught it or  — this is also a very real thing — they may struggle with ADHD as adults. That can really mean that they have to work even harder to develop very robust executive functioning skills and systems in order to be able to manage themselves. 

It can be simple things — like we all have that to-do list of the things. Unless you have good executive functioning skills, your to-do list will never work because you don’t have a system for saying, “Okay, this is how long this task is going to take, and this is where and when I am going to do this task.” Just like we’re told that things that, in order to have like an organized environment, we have to find a place to put our stuff, and that’s like where its home is. 

You also have to have a place in time to put the things that need to be done in, or they will just stay on that to-do list and your life will flow by, and you’ll become increasingly annoyed with yourself that you haven’t updated your budget or opened the mail in two months because you haven’t identified when are you going to do that activity. There are all kinds of books on these sorts of skills. 

If you, in listening to this podcast, become aware that, “Yeah, you know what? I never did learn how to do that. It could be super helpful just to look through some of those.” There are also such things as productivity coaches who can help teach you how to do that. But those are learnable skills. If you didn’t learn them overtly somewhere along the way, you might want to consider doing that. 

Those are some of the deeper things that I have found to be at the core of perfectionism. Some of the strategies that I’ve worked with clients around implementing — there are certainly others. Of course, like any of the podcasts that I create — this podcast is in no way intended to be an answer to the whole thing. For many people, it was certainly for myself. It took a long time. I had to work at this for years in order to figure out what was leading to procrastination, and also to develop the skills, and strategies, and practices that helped me move past it. 

Before we end, I do want to share one other strategy that has really helped me and helped a lot of my clients. Again, this is a deeper thing. It’s not something that you can just start doing right away, but it is very much worth doing. It’s sitting down and spending some time reflecting on your values — like what feels genuinely meaningful and important to you? Like getting connected to your “why”. Why do you do anything? Why do you want this job anyway?

Is it your family? Is your art? Is it other things in your life that are super important to you? Really get clear about those. Then, start to figure out which tasks, or projects, or habits, things that you may have been putting off — how they connect to these larger values. I tell you what, if they don’t connect to the larger values, I would like to give you permission to just cross them off your list. 

Unless, of course, they are extremely important values to somebody that you are partnered with, and crossing them off your list could lead to the detriment of your relationship. You certainly don’t want to do that. But if you do this for yourself, what you will have left is a collection of things that are actually meaningful and important to you. Then, you can begin to create sort of goals around these. 

When we can get clear about our values and the goals that kind of flow off of those, and then the tasks or the projects that we need to do in order to accomplish these goals that are a manifestation of our values, then there becomes much more meaning in our daily tasks. We also have a lot more clarity about what is important and why. That in itself can be quite motivating. 

Something I’ve gotten in the habit of doing is every week, we’ll think about my values, my long-term goals, and then, “What are just the three most important things I could do this week that would move me towards those?” Then, from those weekly goals, what are the three most important small things I could do today that would carry me towards that, and do those first. Do those during your most high-energy days, and respecting the fact that those times of day are very special times of day that not just anything should wander into your energy field at those times of the day. 

That time is reserved for special and important things that are connected to your highest meaning and value, and getting in the habit of doing those things first. When you do that, every day will be incredibly productive because you’ll be doing the most important things. Even if you don’t do all of the things, you can feel good and confident that you are living in alignment with your values, and you’re making the most important things happen because that’s where it’s at. 

We all need to release this idea that we can do all of the “everything” — that’s not possible. But we should strive to be doing the things that are important to us. That’s one last tip. I hope it’s helpful. But again, I don’t want you to hear this podcast and think that you should be able to do all of these things that I’ve advised. Then, that just turns into another thing to feel bad about yourself around if you can’t. That is not the way that people work. 

These are growth experiences. This is a process, and getting information like this is a part of the process. But true growth — it’s never informational, it is experiential, it occurs over time. I just wanted to remind you of that before we end so that you can be gentle with yourself as you are working on this. Anyway, thank you so much for spending this time with me today. I do hope this was helpful, and I will see you next time, next week. In the meantime, here is more Wimps.