Understanding Procrastination: Planning and Productivity

This week, how to reduce procrastination and why you don’t want to completely remove it. 

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Script | 353

Hello, and welcome to episode 353 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

We recently asked what’s the biggest thing that ruins your productivity on my YouTube community page. 58% of participants said procrastination. 

In a way, that doesn’t surprise me. When you see the statistics on how many people spend time planning their days and weeks, I am actually surprised that the number isn’t higher. I’ll explain shortly.

Now, procrastination has been around for a very long time. Leonardo Da Vinci only managed to finish a small number of paintings. Of the twenty paintings attributed to him, around five were finished. 

Leonardo was a serial procrastinator. Yet, it was that procrastination that led to many of his inventions. If he had not procrastinated as much as he did, we would have many more of his paintings but very few of his notebooks full of drawings and diagrams. 

The good news is, there are a few practices you can do that will reduce procrastination and enable you to be more internal about your days. 

To get us started, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Carlos. Carlos asks, Hi Carl, what advice do you have for overcoming procrastination?

Hi Carlos, thank you for your question. 

As I alluded to, procrastination and daily and weekly planning are linked. When you are clear about what needs to be accomplished you will procrastinate less. 

The problem when you have no plan is you waste a lot of time trying to decide what needs to be done. And then, it’s likely you will pick the easiest thing to do in the hope it will get you started. 

It’s true, you will get started, but you will be doing low value tasks leaving behind the higher value ones. The ones you don’t know what needs to be done or what the first action is because you don’t have a plan. 

And that leaves you at the end of the day looking at a list of important, high value things you didn’t do. 

One way to overcome this is to be very clear about what the next action is. In my next YouTube video, coming out on Thursday, I explain why “think about” tasks are not really tasks and will be the ones you will sacrifice the moment your day becomes busy. 

The reason why these get put off is because it’s not clear what the real action is. For example, if I had a task like “think about what to buy mum for her birthday”, I would procrastinate. It’s too much effort and is not the real task. 

The real task might be to talk to my brother and sister about what they re getting my mum. Or I could talk to my father and ask him what he thinks she would like. 

Which task would you most likely do:

Think about what to buy mum for her birthday, or, call my brother and ask him what he’s getting mum for her birthday? 

One is actionable the other is wishy washy. The wishy washy task is the one you will procrastinate on. 

You will procrastinate because it’s not clear what needs to be done. 

This is where planning comes in. When you have a plan for the day and are clear about what needs to be done, you will be less likely to procrastinate because your brain is subconsciously planning ahead for you. You’re doing one task and your brain is thinking, subconsciously, about what you will do next and how to complete the task. 

This prevents your brain from going offline and procrastinating. 

However, when you don’t have a plan for the day, none of that happens. Instead, you procrastinate. You are always on the lookout for something interesting to do, and anything that does not fit the mood you’re in will be skipped for something more interesting. 

So, the first practice to develop is to plan your day.

This does not take a long time. It can be done in five minutes. And the ideal time for maximum procrastination protection is to do it before you finish the day. 

There’s something more intentional about starting your day knowing exactly what it is you want to get accomplished. 

Now, there is a caveat here. If you are an early riser, you can do your planning for the day as part of your morning routine. After all, it’s only five minutes. 

So how do you effectively plan your day?

Step one. Look at your appointments for the day. How much time do you have left after your meetings and meal breaks?

Step two is to look at your task list and choose actionable tasks that you can do in the time you have available. 

Step three is to prioritise those tasks. Which ones are your non-negotiables? The ones that must be done today? 

And that’s it. 

To give you an example, Today, I have six hours of meetings. I also need to take Louis to his groomers for his haircut. In total, I have around seven and a half hours of commitments today. 

That leaves me with around two hours for everything else. This means, the only task I can confidently complete today is this podcast script. So that’s what I have on my list of tasks. 

There’s no point in me having twenty tasks on my to-do list. It would be impossible to do them all in two hours. 

Now if I began the day with twenty tasks and seven and half hours of commitments, I would waste so much time trying to decide what to do—ie procrastinate. No! The only thing that matters is getting this script completed. 

So, that’s my plan for the day. 

Now there are other factors involved in procrastination. If you are sleep deprived, for example, you’re not going to be focused and you will procrastinate. All those shiny objects, social media feeds and click bait news will be attractive. Your brain’s tired and it won’t want to be doing anything that requires thought or creativity. 

Similarly, if you eat a high carbohydrate lunch, you’re going to find staying on task in the afternoon challenging. The insulin spike that results in you feeling groggy and tired will cause you to procrastinate. 

I would also add that if you are not moving enough you will catch yourself procrastinating. A good tip here is to get up after each session of work or meeting and go for a walk around your workplace for ten minutes. 

While you’re walking, think about your next task and how you will do it. You will find when you settle down to get back to work, you are more focused and ready to go. 

None of these reasons mean you are a serial procrastinator. It just means you’re tired. Fix that issue first. Get enough sleep, be careful what you eat at lunch time and make sure you move for ten minutes between sessions of work. 

Do those four things: plan you day, get enough sleep, avoid carbs for lunch and move and you will see a significant reduction in the procrastination. 

Now when talking about procrastination, we do have to be careful. Sometimes procrastination can be a good thing. 

I mentioned Leonardo Da Vinci earlier. His procrastination is what led him to invent things hundreds of years before anyone else thought about them. 

You see procrastination is really all about exploring ideas. The trouble today is there are far too many things we can procrastinate on. 

You’re thinking about your summer holidays and remember you need to buy a new suitcase. So, you head online and search luggage. Yet, it’s eight months before you go on your holiday. You don’t need to buy or research new luggage now. Yet, that’s more interesting than whatever else you should be doing. 

And because it’s so easy to do a Google search, you do that. 

Now, had you added a task to research new luggage and added it to your long-term and on hold folder, it’s unlikely you would be thinking about luggage today. It collected, processed and in your system. 

There’s a time for procrastination—the exploration of ideas, but it needs to be controlled. 

A tip here is to keep a part of your day as free as you can. For instance, you could try to keep your afternoons as free as possible so if you do slip into procrastination, you’ve got your most important work done in the morning and your procrastination can be made useful. 

This means when you plan your day, you make sure your most important work gets done in the morning. 

Which comes back to ensuring you have a plan for your day. 

So you don’t want to be eliminating procrastination completely. It’s your creative brain wanting to explore. It’s more a case of controlling it. 

Which means it’s a good idea to monitor when you procrastinate. When I’ve done this, I find I procrastinate most in the early afternoons. Knowing this, I have designed my schedule to allow me time to take Louis for his walk. I know my brain wants to explore ideas at that time. What better way to do it than to be walking in nature and thinking about all these distractions and ideas? 

What it comes down to is having a realistic plan for the day. If you find yourself staring at an impossible day, you will inevitably procrastinate. Then you will get annoyed with yourself. Yet, you can fix it. Be very clear about what your non-negotiable tasks for the day are. 

Your brain will then take over and give you that sense of urgency to get the non-negotiable tasks done. 

I’ve never been a fan of website blockers or forcing yourself to turn off your devices. I find those become a distraction in themselves because you are now worried about what you are missing. 

What I’ve found works for my clients is to have that plan, be aware of how tired you are and if you are tired, take a nap, if you can, or get up and go for a walk. That way you softly remove the temptation to procrastinate and once back you can get on with your high-value work.

I hope that has helped, Carlos. Thank you for your question. And thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.