Have you ever put off an important task and found yourself busy doing something else?
After returning from a month in the UK, I set my intention to write marketing copy for my Professional Coaching Program Certification launch for an hour each day.
Every day, something else would take priority.
As it’s been so cold this winter, I started putting out a handful of peanuts for the squirrels each day (I am passionate about wildlife!).
Instead of writing copy, I was inventing ways to feed one of my braver squirrels by hand.
One morning, I found myself sorting through a whole 25LB bag of peanuts for the shells with 3 nuts inside.
(These are perfect to hold out for a nervous squirrel to take directly from my hand! 🙂)
Then, I separated out the shells with two nuts and single nuts inside…
OMG! Before I knew it I realized that I’d spent an hour sorting my peanuts!
I certainly wasn’t being lazy, as sorting nut sizes required focus and effort – including locating and arranging different containers to store them in for easy access.
After all, it wasn’t like I was binge-watching a series on Netflix – I was supporting my local wildlife during freezing weather!
So what was going on?
This wasn’t poor time management or laziness…
I was procrastinating!
You know when you’re procrastinating, but you do it anyway!
If you’ve ever written marketing copy you’ll be familiar with how much work is involved. It’s overwhelming! In my mind, I’d made the whole thing a big production! Anxiety kicked in.
Every time I sat down to write I distracted myself and something else would always take priority.
The weird thing was I knew I was procrastinating but I did it anyway!
Even though it made me feel terrible, I continued to avoid writing my copy, while at the same time, knowing it was a bad idea to put this writing off.
It made me feel miserable, but I kept not doing it, and my Squirrel friends provided me with the perfect distraction – after all, I felt sorry for them in the bitterly cold weather!
In a moment of realization – I saw I was creating my own suffering by avoiding this important work. Categorizing the peanuts for the squirrels provided short-term emotional relief in the present moment.
My behavior was irrational.
Dr. Fuschia Sirois, a professor of psychology at the University of Sheffield, explains that procrastination is essentially irrational because “It doesn’t make sense to do something you know is going to have negative consequences.”
So why do we abuse ourselves and create suffering in this way?
Procrastination is a coping strategy
All human beings procrastinate and put off the things we know we should do from time to time. It is our natural way of coping with challenging emotions and negative feelings such as fear, self-doubt, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, irritation, boredom, anger, abandonment, or resentment (to name just a few).
These emotions and feelings can be influenced by certain tasks we intend to do.
Procrastinating provides short-term relief to our negative emotions in the present moment when you put the task off. It’s like a reward for not doing it. This has a compounding effect because once you’ve felt the momentary feeling of relief, you are likely to repeat the cycle again in the future.
You’re developing a pattern.
Putting things off only compounds the negative association with the task and these feelings will re-surface every time you come back to this task or show up to try and complete it.
Over time, constant procrastination has destructive effects on our mental and physical health, including stress, anxiety, depression, cardiovascular issues and hypertension, to name a few.
We are deluded by our future thinking and putting the task off helps us to disassociate with it in the present moment.
Your ‘Lizard Brain’ takes over and keeps you stuck
The limbic or lizard is the most primitive part of our brain. It evolved millions of years ago and is in charge of our fight, flight and freeze responses.
Your lizard brain triggers responses 500 times faster than thought. It’s also closest to the chemicals that generate our emotions. So before you’ve thought something, you’ve reacted! If there’s an emergency then our lizard brain takes over to protect itself when our basic survival needs are threatened.
Your Lizard brain can’t tell the difference between real or perceived danger. If something makes us feel uncomfortable or threatens us then our lizard brain will resist.
When you’re faced with a task that makes you feel stressed, anxious or insecure, the amygdala (the part of the limbic brain responsible for threat detection) flicks the ‘off-switch’ on the weaker neocortex (the rational thinking part of the brain).
We become stuck in the lizard brain which generates flight, fight or freeze through a raft of emotions. Rational thinking is replaced by fragmented limiting or negative beliefs.
This is known as an amygdala hijack.
The Limbic brain is hardwired to remove the perceived threat in the present moment, even though we might be aware that we are creating more stress for ourselves in the future.
We’re evolutionarily screwed!
It’s ironic if you think about it, we procrastinate to avoid negative feelings but end up feeling even worse, as a result.
Procrastination is about your emotions, NOT productivity!
No amount of productivity techniques or hacks will help you break out of this habitual loop of needing an instant reward from an immediate perceived threat. Productivity does not address the root cause…
At its core, procrastination is about your emotions, not productivity.
You have to explore the source of your emotions underneath the procrastination and then develop new ways to manage your emotions by creating a pattern interrupt to break the habitual loop.
“Our brains are always looking for relative rewards. If we have a habit loop around procrastination but we haven’t found a better reward, our brain is just going to keep doing it over and over until we give it something better to do.”
– psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Judson Brewer.
How to break free from procrastination
When you are in a procrastination loop your current reward is avoidance.
To break free, you are looking for a better reward that will relieve your negative feelings in the present moment, and enable you to move forward instead of staying stuck.
Here’s how I help my coaching clients when they are locked in a habitual loop:
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Recognize the pattern – Start to notice when you are procrastinating and putting things off. List your limiting and negative beliefs. Ask yourself, what is behind your avoidance? How does it make you feel? What are the consequences of your feelings?
Name the emotions and explore the feelings associated with them.
This is a major step in beginning to release and relax the pattern.
It’s surprising how much we function mechanically according to our habits and patterns. We respond in predictable repetitive ways according to our earlier programming!
Remember… Procrastination is just a coping strategy… it’s part of our biology!
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Give yourself permission to create a little distance between yourself and the pattern – Creating a gap helps you to see that this pattern is not who you are. By creating a distance between, you are disassociating yourself from the pattern and not taking it personally – you see it for what it truly is, a coping strategy.
When you create a distance between yourself and the pattern, you interrupt the pattern and create an opportunity to CHOOSE how you respond to the situation. You are separating the pattern from who you are.
Be willing to fully experience your emotions and the feelings associated with your pattern of procrastination. Most of us are not used to doing this and push them away or numb them out. This will help you to know yourself more deeply and expand your choices of approach.
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Be curious about your procrastination – What you are avoiding is your biggest teacher, if you are open to choosing curiosity over comfort. Be courageous by being curious and open to the unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Your emotions are just growing pains waiting to be released, you can learn so much from them.
Curiosity has a much lighter energy to it and helps you to become the student of you or the observer. Become interested, even fascinated with your own behavior. Find the humor when you catch yourself in the act (This is what I did when I found myself sorting a 25lb bag of peanuts! 🙂). -
Be kind and compassionate to yourself – When we have high stress and anxiety, we have low compassion for ourselves. We all judge ourselves and this creates more suffering. Your inner critic tells lies. The voices in your head aren’t real… remember this.
Learn to be non-judgmental and befriend yourself on the inside. Self-compassion has been proven to support personal growth and motivation. Accept your mistakes – you are learning.
Meet your challenges with kindness and acceptance, and this practice will support you in a greater degree of freedom in your life.
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Remove any temptations or distractions – Especially if your procrastination leads you to check apps, play games on your phone, or get lost in social media. Remove the temptations or place obstacles in the way such as removing Apps or signing out of them so you have to login in every time.
Blowing off going to the gym until tomorrow is another great example. I get my gym clothes ready the night before and set an alarm across the room, so I have to get out of bed to turn it off! I’m up now, so I might as well get dressed and go! I also remind myself I will feel as I leave the gym after my workout.
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Don’t wait to feel like it before doing it – I guarantee you will be waiting A LONG TIME if you’re waiting for motivation to show up first. Taking action creates motivation. You have to do something first. I’ve used the following question to help a client get started, “If I was going to take action, what would the first thing I’d do to get started, even though I’m not going to do it?” This question opens up the possibility of shifting your thinking.
We are all vulnerable to procrastination it’s habitual and part of our coping strategies as a human being.
Don’t let tomorrow become the busiest day of your week!
Okay, enough procrastinating – I’m off to finish sorting my 25 LB of peanuts before it becomes something else unfinished to procrastinate over! 🙂
What strategies do you use to help you overcome procrastination? Share them in the comments, we’d love to read them!