Taming Procrastination, with Wisdom from Birbal, Ford and Chairman Deng

Our past is riddled with achievements, failures, delays, surprises and other events. Had I not postponed and delayed some actions, I would have achieved much more by now. For reasons unknown to us, we all have tasks that we don’t want to attend to, in time.

Procrastination is the performance problem that has infected and affected the best of us. It kills our willpower and puts off our achievements. How can we tame this dangerous animal?

Whenever we discuss the performance, productivity and effectiveness of an individual, the elephant in the room is always procrastination.

Annoyed by my frequent surrenders to this problem across many years, I set out to find solutions to tackle it. Across more than a decade, I found and created nearly 30 approaches, all of different degrees of efficacy. Here are my discoveries collated and organised in two sections for simplicity and ease of use.

THOUGHT. It’s not you, it’s your mind.

Henry Ford said it well, ‘Whether you think you can, or you think you can't - you're right.’ So, let’s use your mind to drive your behaviour.

Action pre-play. Mohammed Ali, the Greatest, is reported to have imagined his actions before he stepped into the ring. The rest is history, as you know. So, to win the big fight (you are your enemy here), you must prime yourself to slide into the effort smoothly.

Birbal, the longer line. The first choice of the expert procrastinator is to strike the easiest task. The trick is to make a collection of tasks all larger than the task that you wish to postpone – and guess what you would do next? It’s so easy to fool yourself!

Quantum thinking. If you look at anything long enough, it seems to shrink. Take time off and stare at the task in front of you, repeatedly and every few minutes. Soon, it looks so small that you can overcome it without much effort.

Preparation before perspiration. Keep the materials, files, phone numbers, papers, password, and other resources nearby. Follow this mythical statement, ‘If I had 8 hours to chop down a tree, I would spend 6 of those hours sharpening my axe’. With better readiness, your axe is ready for the task.

Cost analysis. No, you do not need accounting skills to do this. Calculate the potential cost (e.g. penalty) of procrastination and compare it to the value of the effort that you would need for the task. Fatten the cost till it appears many times larger than the value of the effort. You are now convinced that you must tackle the task without much ado.

Dream it. Write your tasks (say three) in large bold letters on paper, before you go to bed. Dream about them as many times as you can - see #1 action pre-play and #3 quantum thinking. By next morning, you will be eager to attack your tasks immediately. But do it before you get distracted with other work routines.

ACTION. It’s not speed, it’s size!

2-minute action. A powerful but rarely heard recommendation for all small tasks is to do it now. A ‘now’ mindset saves time by preventing the task on an agenda or a checklist. Of course, this action needs resources at hand and assumes that you can do it, usually alone. And it may delay other larger tasks under execution.

The ignition. If you begin to work on a task, you will move forward. The task shrinks in front of you; you pick up speed. You slide, smoothly and almost pleasantly, towards the end. So, don’t wait; collect the resources, switch off the cellphone, find the time, and start the engine. Soon, the task is over.

Linked actions. Find two or more actions with common features. Maybe they share the same room, workspace, table, garden or location, person or time. When you attend to one task, you do the other too – simultaneously or sequentially, who cares? Twofold results with no extra effort and in almost the same period. Multitasking works, but only you can make it happen.

Project management. Break the large task into pieces of a size that can be immediately attended by you. As you complete each piece, you see that the task remaining is smaller than before, encouraging you to work, faster. Thus, the solution is simple: Slice and tear apart any big task into fragments; the rest is easy. It’s creeping progress but it all adds up faster than you can imagine.

Seek others’ intervention. Delegate your task – guide or direct another. Collaborate – Work together, push each other. Outsource – pay for expertise. Whatever the approach, spend a tenth of your energy and complete the task in half the time. This may solve your last mile problems and help you learn from others.

I have personally tested and used all these approaches. Not all will suit your every task. Neither will you like them all. You may also find it convenient to use more than one approach to attack a task as I have often done. Follow Chairman Deng Xiaoping’s axiom, ‘It doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice’. So, in whatever way the approaches work for you, use them.

#procrastination #thought #action