A Business Woman's Guide To Overcoming Procrastination In 5 Steps
Procrastination is a form of sabotage that holds us back from pursuing our goals, but what if you connected to a compelling vision of your future life? The life you most deeply desire in your heart to create? What if you are able to see this vision so clearly in your minds-eye that is serves as a consistent driving force to move you forward towards the big hairy scary goal that you have set for yourself (or WANT to set for yourself?). What I know as a coach is that we can connect to a vision that is so big, so inspirational, so full of purpose that it will literally demolish every fear and obstacle that stands in our way, including procrastination. The right goal can be more powerful than anything that would normally get in our way. This vision will become stronger than our fears and connected to a purpose bigger than ourselves. We can manifest the results that we want through consistent MASSIVE action combined with lots of faith in ourselves.
How do we develop faith in ourselves? Faith is another word for trust, in this case trusting ourselves. Self-trust is the foundation of self-confidence and it is cultivated through making a commitment to ourselves and to keeping that word, no matter what. We can create the life we want by keeping our word to ourselves. In the book, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, he states that the number one agreement is to Be Impeccable With Our Word. Part of living in integrity to our word is to keep the promises that we make to ourselves. Stephen Covey says in the book 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People "By making and keeping promises to ourselves and others, little by little, our honor becomes greater than our moods". When our word to ourselves become greater than how we feel, greater than our fickle moods - we will LITERALLY become unstoppable.
So, I challenge you today to decide what your future life will look like. Visualize it. Commit to manifesting it. Then take massive consistent action in getting it done and I dare you to come back to me December 31st of this year and tell me that you have not seen SIGNIFICANT changes in your life. In fact, I DOUBLE dare you!
To help you get in action, here are a few steps to overcome the procrastination habit in this week’s blog article.
5 Steps To Breaking Your Procrastination Habit
1. Decide if “THE THING” is really important to you
Often people put off doing something because they have committed to take action out of obligation. It is truly not something they have any desire to that is linked to a bigger goal or outcome but they have taken on the commitment to move forward because they don’t want to say no, or to disappoint someone or to hurt their feelings. Maybe they are moving forward because they think this is what they SHOULD do based on society’s expectation, family tradition, religious obligation or for some other reason. The quicker we can get real about whether we are truly committed to doing something because it is based on our values and bigger mission in life or that it is really not that important to us, the quicker we can release ourselves from the exhausting weight that this unnecessary obligation has placed upon us.
Here are a few powerful coaching questions to help you get real about your true commitment to the thing you have a habit of procrastinating on.
Is this action tied to a bigger purpose or desire in your life?
Where is the desire for doing this thing coming from?
Are you violating or side stepping a personal value if you do move forward?
Is taking action on this thing creating conflict or dissonance to a mission you hold highly?
If you know WHY you are moving forward in and area and it is tied to a value that you esteem as very important - such as contribution, service, justice, excellence, then it is much more likely that you will move forward because there is an inherent driving force to give you momentum to get and stay in action. HOWEVER, if taking action is in direct violation to a value that you have, then until that violation is resolved - you will undoubtedly keep battling with staying in consistent action because being in action is causing you to step on a value that you hold very highly. For example, many people who value fun, freedom and creativity, will find it hard to stick to a consistent schedule - time blocking, etc. because there is a belief that they are being restricted and constricted by the schedule. Until they reconcile that the schedule will actually give them greater freedom, then they will most likely never consistently organize their time and schedule it. This inner conflict must be resolved before long lasting change will occur.
For more information on the power of values, check out this blog.
2. Determine What Pain (stress) You Are Avoiding
As stated before, people don’t procrastinate because they are inherently lazy people. They procrastinate either because taking action will be in direct violation of something else they view as important OR they procrastinate to avoid stress.
The stress could come from having to confront the fact that they might not have enough money coming into the bank, so they procrastinate checking and reconciling their bank accounts. Facing the reality may feel overwhelming to them in this case. The stress could also come from how big the task ahead of them seems.
The fix here is to not make it hard. The fix is to make it easy. You don’t have to figure out ALL the steps, just figure out the next step, a small one and take action on that. Break it down into small easy steps and start tackling each one by one instead of trying to boil the ocean in one day. I know, I know, you have heard this so many times that you are probably tempted to skip over this easy thought, thinking yup I have heard this and I know it - but unless you have taken action on something you have heard, you don’t actually know it!!
The last point here, is that we have super creative minds which can make taking action seem like the most overwhelming and stressful thing, when the reality is that NOT taking action can cause a problem to accelerate into a total disaster. If we took the baby steps now that seem stressful, the reality is that we would avoid a bigger stress later on. You can use your creative mind to your advantage by actually playing out the worse case scenario of NOT taking action so that you can recognize that taking action now will be a reliever for future possible stress. (e.g. having that difficult conversation now with the bank, while it will be slightly uncomfortable or inconvenient, but could save you from the true stress of getting your car or home re-possessed).
3. Just start small (don’t go big or go home)
If you are like me, you are the all or nothing type of gal. You go big or go home as they say. That might be amazing for a few things, but when we apply that mindset to things we already deem as difficult, it significantly increases the likelihood of procrastination. The best thing to do as stated before is to take small baby steps.
One very practical way to do this, I have found is literally just count to 5 as Mel Robbins states in her book The Five Second Rule and then just move into action. I have found that in addition to that 5 second count down to get started, if I set a 5 minute timer and just start taking action on the thing, I will keep going. It is interesting that when we use our will power to push just for a few minutes to take action, we literally don’t stop. We keep going. James Clear, in his book Atomic Habits refer to this as JUST SHOWING UP and taking a small action. Once we establish consistency in just showing up and taking small action, then we can build on that. Taking the first step my friend is always the hardest part. Try setting the 5 minute timer and let me know how it works for you!
Decide, commit and follow through with action so that you can build that self-trust and confidence you need to attain success.
4. Public accountability (harness the power of caring what other people think)
I have written a lot of releasing ourselves from the fear of criticism and being free from what other people think about us because it can cause us not to live our values and to NOT take action in areas that are very important to us. However, this tendency to obsess over what people think can be turned on its head and harnessed to our advantage to get us to take action. For example having someone else such as a coach, an accountability group or a partner in action can be so effective because we may not be motivated keep our word to ourselves (although, it is something we need to work towards), but we will keep that word to someone else. Most people will work very hard not to disappoint someone’s opinion they respect.
If you find it hard to get or stay in action, find a supportive partner that will help you take the necessary steps to move forward!
5. Let Go Of Perfectionism & Adapt The MVP Mentality From The Lean Start Up
Trying to do everything perfectly is literally an obstacle for launching forward into action. There is a popular saying that I agree with, we should aim for progress over perfection. While we are waiting to dot every “i” and to cross every “t”, we get stuck from moving forward due to analysis paralysis. Adapting the mindset of just taking action and looking at everything as an experiment until you get to the final masterpiece is a helpful mindset to keep moving forward. The LEAN Start Up book, captures this idea perfectly. Instead of thinking, I have to get it perfect before I take action we can move forward imperfectly, learn and keep tweaking for improvement . The way Eric Ries talks about it in his book is that he uses the build, measure, learn process - that is build a product, measure your customers’ (or stakeholders’) reactions, and learn if your idea is good or needs to be adapted. Instead of trying to do everything perfectly the first time around, which causes delay, apply the value of learning and improving as you go to stay in consistent action. If our focus is learning rather than getting it perfectly right the first time, we can quickly move on to use the data we get to pivot as needed. We can move fast because we know that as we learn - the excellence we are looking for (because excellence actually our goal, though we confuse it with the unattainable one of perfection) will come. Moving forward quickly allows you to test your hypothesis and gets you moving to the destination/goal that you desire faster than if you just sat in analysis paralysis - not moving forward.
The paradox is, The more you act imperfectly, is the quicker you get to the perfection (aka the excellent end, read more about excellence vs. perfectionism here). Imperfection action speeds up the process.
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