I’m going to stop procrastinating tomorrow.

But for real, when I was in high school and my first attempt through college, I had a terrible problem with procrastination. Doing homework at the very last minute worked well enough in high school, but at the post-secondary and professional level it doesn’t really cut it.

In my second and successful attempt at college, I made it a policy to just do all my homework right away. That meant working while I ate lunch, using free periods when they were available, and often staying after class. If I had time leftover by completing a lab early, I’d start on my homework then.

In all, it typically cost me an extra hour or two on my day. But in the end, I didn’t have to take any homework home with me. It became routine that I was staying late most days, so it wasn’t a big problem if I did end up late. There was also a very distinct separation between my work and home life, and I think that helped reinforce the behaviour.

This isn’t always a super healthy attitude to take. I burned out pretty hard after graduation. I’ve since learned to relax, but I do struggle with procrastination frequently now.

Never procrastinating isn’t achievable for some people. Nor do I think it should be. You can’t always summon willpower from where there isn’t will. If you struggle with neurodivergence or mental illness, then you probably know exactly what I’m talking about.

I believe to a certain extent it’s healthy to procrastinate. Often, your brain is telling you that you need rest, and it does so through procrastination. However, you can’t procrastinate yourself out of a problem, lest you end up with more severe problems.

If you want to find a healthy way to reduce your procrastination there are a lot of tips out there that might set you up for success. But if something isn’t working for you, it’s okay to be skeptical of it. There’s an entire industry of pop psychology scientific-sounding crap out there. The behavioural sciences are a constantly evolving field, and what was touted as a solution twenty years ago may be out of touch with today’s understanding.

Here’s a few tips that have been helpful to me, and with less eulogizing:

Tip 1 - Minimize

• Think of the smallest part of the task you have to do
• Find a triggering event to remind you to do the task
• Do that smallest part
• Congratulate yourself

Example: I have a sink full of dirty dishes that need to be washed. Whenever I get up for a glass of water, I wash one dish and fist pump.

This one’s great for building habits. The reasoning is that you have a reminder event to prompt you into action, and then you’re giving a positive association to the task. It’s also a good technique for large tasks made up of many small parts. Something is better than nothing, and often times I find that I take on more of the task because I’ve already gotten over the largest hurdle of starting.

Tip 2 - Randomize

• Make a list of the tasks you’re avoiding doing
• Randomly select a task
• Do the task

Example: I have six tasks I’m avoiding, so I write out a list and roll a six-sided die to pick a task.

The reasoning is that when we’re faced with too many options, we freeze up. It can take a surprising amount of mental energy to make a decision, so you’re allowing a system to make the decision for you.

Cop out: if you roll the die and it lands on Wash the Dishes and you have a strong feeling that you would have preferred to have selected Take out Garbage, then go ahead and take out the garbage. We can use randomness as a crutch, but we’re allowed to make our own luck too.

Tip 3 - Prioritize

• Accept that you’re going to procrastinate, even if it’s just a little bit
• Think of a task you could be doing that’s more favourable than the one you’re avoiding
• Do that task while you procrastinate

Example: I have to file my taxes and I’m dreading the paperwork. My floor also needs to be swept. I sweep the floor until I feel I’m ready to tackle my taxes.

This technique is mostly about minimizing the impact of procrastinating. Rather than procrastinating idly, you can procrastinate in a way that’s a little productive. It’s not really a solution to the problem of procrastination, but something is better than nothing.

If you’re struggling with procrastination and as a result have difficulty forming healthy habits, I wholeheartedly recommend Tiny Habits for further reading. I’ve tried a lot of self-help with mixed results, and this one has been the most impactful by far.

Just do it… for five minutes.

Once the time is up, you either would give up or continue your task to completion. Either way, you had progress.

One thing that works is finding ways to make achieving small tasks part of your routine. I have a to-do list and in my lunch break at work I often pick off one or two things and decide okay, that’s what I’ll do when I get home. And so that way the selecting of the tasks and the doing of the tasks are things that have their own specific times and the decision is already made.

What also works is to create some external motivation.

I might not feel like cleaning the house, for example, but if I have friends coming over then I’ll enthusiastically clean everything because I want it to be nice for them.

And so sometimes I intentionally weaponise that by inviting a friend over just to give myself that extrinsic motivation.

I’m not very good at not procrastinating, but I started to do things for “future me” and when I realize “omg I don’t have to do this cause it’s already done”, I thank past me.

And when I end up having to do things last minute and in a rush, I tell past me that they have been right all along and that I should have let them do their thing.

I found that I would procrastinate less when I was thankful for myself for doing things earlier.

I never solved it, but I realized earlier that I can play to my strengths instead of fighting my nature. Does this irritate, confuse and inconvenience myself and others sometimes ? Yes

But it has allowed me to do a lot of stuff and be truer to myself over many years. I am less of a conformist , and totally shaped my life and career for this to be an advantage .

I’ll save this post for later to read

Man, Lemmy sure is good at not answering (just) “later” like Reddit would repeatedly. It’s a weird level of restraint for the internet.

I stopped trying to do optional things.

I used a Filofax before 16. Not that I needed it, but I liked it and felt very organised. Not sure if my mom is to blame, she was a financial accountant, so always did things very carefully and accurately.

Let’s not start about uni, where getting laid and smoking funny things was more important than being organised, but when I started working, I tried a lot of techniques.

I read something somewhere which I find quite fitting:

• If you only have few tasks, anything might do. Keep them in mind, scribble them on a piece of paper. No need to prioritise them, because priority is instantly clear when looking at the few tasks.
• if you’ve got more than just a few tasks then you need to write them on a to do list. With more and more tasks, you need to put them into some kind of order. Ordering the tasks by priority is most often a good idea.
• If you have a lot of tasks and you juggle a lot of projects then you need something even bigger,which may be a system like GTD. This way, you can prioritise projects, individual tasks and also tasks not belonging to any project.

This helps me to avoid procrastination.

I still use the techniques above, depending on my current workload.

Decide to pocrastinate later after you did all the things.

No really, if there is something to do, do it immediately. You store tasks in the later and you only exist in the now, so later is never now. There is only now and you need to decide to procrastinate later.

Don’t justify why you can’t do it now. “I should wait until…” Naw, unless it is impossible to do because you need to shave the yak, do it now. No, it won’t be better to do it at 4:00, 4:15, 4:30 or whatever nice increment of time. Do the shit at 3:53.

You decide when to do something, procrastination is deciding not to do something. Make the very real conscious decision to do the thing now. It isn’t easy, you will have to catch yourself slipping, and you will have to learn the habit.

Counterintuitively, I try to do less. If I have 5 things to do today and can’t motivate myself to get started, I push all but 1 or 2 off until later. Then I know a nice, log break is waiting for me for the rest of the day if I finish those things. At that point, getting the one or two things done feels worthwhile, and it feels like there’s a reward for me at the end (goofing off guilt-free).

I mean, I wasn’t going to get all 5 things done today because I’m a procrastinator. But if I accept that and make the workload much lighter, can get a little done.

I try to divide up the task into so small bits that it seems ridiculous. Tasks you can do in 5 min. Do it, take break if needed (or not, if you feel you’re getting in the flow). Do take a break after you notice getting tired (even if you still feel motivated).

• Pomodoro timers (hit a keybinding, a 25min timer will start. Within that time, do something productive. After that time, you can do a 5min “break”. Then probably start the next timer. You can also adjust the timings of course)
• Treat the thing you want to do instead of your task as the thing you can do as the reward after having done the task first (kind of a gamification mechanism maybe)
• Develop a habit of always doing something productive (from your backlog) each day, unless you’re sick or so
• If the task seems so big or hard that you don’t even start, split it in parts. You rarely have to do everything at once. Splitting it into parts also allows you to not over-exert yourself, so you’ll have more time for the things you’d rather want to do afterwards

I sit and think about it for a while, become distracted with a shiny object, then come back to it later/right before it is due.

I trust future me to take care of it because I have an insane belief that he will be more responsible than I am. Bastard keeps proving me wrong.

At one time, I got one of those small appointment books that office supply stores sell. Writing down a list of things to do and then crossing them off gave me a tiny dopamine kick that was desirable enough to keep going. There’s apparently some science about writing being more effective for this than doing it on your phone. Dunno, but worth checking.