5 Ways To Outsmart Your Brain and Opt-Out of Procrastination Week

This Sunday, March 6, marks the start of National Procrastination Week. A week devoted to the dubious joy that is procrastination. You know, putting things off when they feel too hard, too easy, too complicated, too dull, too much, too little, or the winner of them all: you just don’t feel like it.

If you’ve read my book, you know that I liken procrastination to having a petulant three-year-old in your brain saying “no, no, no” to the things you really should be doing, and screaming “yes, yes, yes” to everything you shouldn’t even be thinking about doing.

It becomes a battle between taking care of the things you need to do, like making progress on a work project that’s due in 48 hours, putting your taxes together or folding the basket of clean clothes that have taken up residence in your living room for the past 72 hours versus doing the things the 3-year-old wants you to do like getting mindlessly distracted by a silly game on your phone or wading into the deep end of all the social media streams and happily splashing around, like, well, a 3-year-old.

In this scenario, your Limbic System is the one that’s dressed up and acting like a three-year-old.

The Limbic System is where your fight or flight response resides and the comfy place your emotions call home. Your Limbic System craves fun, new things. Two descriptions that have never, in the history of the world, been used to describe a basket of clean clothes.

Procrastination Week wouldn’t be a thing if it weren’t for your Limbic System. It might as well be the title sponsor and host a massive, debaucherous festival a bit like Mardi Gras, but with much less bead throwing.

But here’s the thing: no 3-year-old gets its way 100% of the time. The 3-year-old in your Limbic System is no different. You don’t have to give in when your mental 3-year-old starts jumping up and down and screaming “no, no, no” like it just devoured a huge bowl of Apple Jacks doused in sugar.

You can be the adult both in your brain and in the room and politely refuse to celebrate Procrastination Week. All you need to do is follow these five ideas.

1. Quit waiting for everything to be perfect before you get started.

Perfectionism is a great way to procrastinate on nearly everything. If we demand that everything is perfect before we get started or when we finish, there’s no way we can do anything. But for almost everything we do, we can really get by with it being 80% perfect.

Ok, this probably shouldn’t apply to things like flying airplanes, doing brain surgery, or any form of rocket science. I’m not saying be lazy, sloppy, or do things halfway. But don’t use perfectionism as an excuse to procrastinate.

One of my favorite ways around the perfectionism problem is to remind myself I’m going for progress, not necessarily perfection.

So I can outline an article when I have some available time, knowing that I can come back later and fill in the blanks. I’m not waiting until I have the perfect amount of time to do the whole article perfectly; 80% is enough to get going.

2. Use Parkinson’s Law and shorten the time you give yourself to get things done.

Parkinson’s Law states that “a task expands to fill the time available for it.” This means if you give yourself 3 hours to do a task that only needs 20 minutes, that 20-minute task will turn into a 3-hour time-wasting, procrastination-filled session. Making it the poster child for Procrastination Week, if there ever was one. Trust me, this is no poster you want to be on.

Shorten the time you give yourself to do things. You’ll force yourself to be in rapid action and eliminate the option of scrolling through your phone, looking for the funny cat videos to fill those three hours. Start giving yourself less time to do your projects and tasks. If you don’t complete them in your first short go, you can add more time. Make this even more effective by using a timer to keep things on track.

3. Avoid Moments of Choice.

One of the best ways to avoid procrastination is to minimize the Moments of Choice that continuously show up in your day. Moments of Choice are the moments between tasks, meetings, or projects where you should immediately turn to the next task, meeting, or project, but instead, you turn to something that’s easily distracting or mentally soothing, or both.

You look at your emails rather than start outlining a new presentation. Instead of proofing the proposal you promised your boss, you grab your ever-present phone and start checking all your notifications. Rather than fold your basket of clean clothes, you wander off to the kitchen to check the contents of the fridge, hoping some interesting chocolate treats have magically materialized.

Your emails, phone notifications, and vigilant fridge checking are all signs you have given into a Moment of Choice and are now procrastinating.

Moments of Choice are always lurking, ready to pull you into the pleasant land of procrastination. Be aware of where you give into Moments of Choice. Be prepared, so you can avoid them. Block distracting websites and distracting people. Only check your email at scheduled times. Put a lock on the kitchen door. Moments of Choice are the on-ramp to procrastination. Don’t take it.

4. Leave breadcrumbs for your inner Hansel and Gretel to follow.

Do you know when it’s easy to procrastinate? When you need to get restarted on something you were already doing. There’s that moment (and yes, it can quickly become a Moment of Choice) where you have to spend time determining what you were doing and what your next steps need to be. Restarting becomes a barrier to getting going.

It would be a lot easier, and you would procrastinate less if you had left yourself some clues about what you were supposed to be doing. Start leaving breadcrumbs in the form of Post-it? Notes on reports that indicate exactly where you were when you left for a meeting. Put a digital note in a report that tells you not only where you were but includes some ideas for bullet points for the next three steps.

Eliminate the whole “why-did-I-come-into-this-room-and-what-am-I-supposed-to-be-doing” feeling by leaving directions for yourself to follow. You’ll be able to restart more quickly and avoid procrastination caused by having to reacquaint yourself with what you were doing.

5. Randomize decision-making.

Leaving your decision-making up to chance eliminates the opportunity for you to procrastinate while you weigh the relative merits of each available choice. Choosing between multiple options can quickly become mentally draining, making it a perfect time to procrastinate by doing anything other than making a firm decision.

Eliminate the possibility by randomizing your decision-making.

Take all your options, whether it’s a to-do list, a list of household chores, or the prospects for dinner out on the town, and number each item and let chance decide. Roll a couple of dice; whatever number comes up is your final answer.

Or you could put each item from your list on separate slips of paper, put them in a bowl, and draw one out. That’s your decision. You can also use any number of free randomizer apps to pick your number. Decision-making can be difficult, procrastinating can be easy. Switch the two around by letting chance make your decisions for you.

The 3-year-old in your brain celebrates and champions Procrastination Week 52 times a year.

You can choose not to participate in any of the festivities.

Forget about waiting for the perfect conditions to get things done perfectly. Give yourself less time to get things done (how long does it really take to fold a basket of clothes?) Know where you encounter Moments of Choice and be prepared to block them. Leave breadcrumbs for yourself so you can quickly get back on track on your projects. Randomize your decision-making by leaving everything up to chance. Five ways you can outsmart the 3-year-old in your brain and celebrate getting things done 365 days a year.