How to Approach Solving Procrastination (Hint: Think Magnifying Glass, Not Tips & Tricks)

(Update: This post deals with behavioral causes of procrastination. However, persistent and debilitating procrastination may actually result from an underlying mental health problem. [7]. A big thanks to reader Greenman2001 for pointing this out.)

Procrastination is the uber-problem - the meta problem, if you will - of productivity. It encompasses almost every "can't make progress" behavior, and is one of the top issues that clients come to me for help with. It's a tough one, and has been a problem for centuries (see How to Procrastinate Like Leonardo da Vinci). This explains why it's one of the most blogged-about topics on the web. Search for 15 seconds and you'll find every form of advice available, mostly a smorgasbord of common tips and tricks like: do the worst/pleasant/easy part first, never stop work at a bad point, break tasks down, focus on the process, make a start, poke holes in it, etc.

Unfortunately, having a toolkit of activities isn't adequate to solve it, or we'd be done. Having enough how-to information isn't the problem.

No, what makes procrastination so nasty is that it's an umbrella concept with multiple possible causes and deep underpinnings. I like how Wikipedia puts it: a complex of bad habits. These can include fear of failure/success/being wrong, poor discipline, distractions, lack of interest, perfectionism, and so on.

This is why grab-bag blog posts, while easy to write and quick to peruse, often by themselves don't help: Taking action to solve a problem without knowing its cause can only have limited success. You might get a temporary boost from the novelty of trying something new (our brains might have novelty detectors built in [1]), but unless you address the underlying origin(s), improvements won't be lasting.

So what we have is: Important problem. Difficult to solve. Unknown causes. Many possible activities/solutions. Expensive to try changes. Time pressure. In other words, A Hard Problem. So what do we do in such a situation?

Experiment!

Here's how to apply this [2]: Try a small number of activities (here's where grab-bags come into play), collect information, analyze your results to see what worked, and decide what to try next. Iterate until you're happy with the progress/results/state. Tips: Keep the turn-around as short as possible (days or weeks, say, not months), make the experiments as small as possible (Kaizen-style [3] tiny changes, for example), and observe and record diligently.

In sum, treat yourself as a complex creature in the wild whose behavior you're trying to understand and adjust [4]. Tap your curiosity: What makes you tick? What gets in the way? Why do you do these counter-productive activities? When do they activate? What are your feelings when they kick in? Who knows, you might actually turn off the fear [5] and start enjoying the ride [6]. Finally, consider getting some help, such as asking a friend to be an accountability partner.

Happy experimenting!

I'm really curious...

• What's your #1 procrastination challenge?
  
• What have you tried to solve it?
  
• How did it work out?
  
• Have you tried this kind of experimental approach to productivity?
  
• Any generalizations that come to mind?
  

References

• [1] Learning By Surprise: Scientific American
  
• [2] While descriptions of scientific methods range in complexity, we've simplified it to "Think, Try, Learn." Wikipedia's Elements of scientific method gives us more detail: The essential elements of a scientific method are iterations, recursions, interleavings, and orderings of the following:
  
  
  
  • Characterizations (observations, definitions, and measurements of the subject of inquiry)
    
  • Hypotheses (theoretical, hypothetical explanations of observations and measurements of the subject)
    
  • Predictions (reasoning including logical deduction from the hypothesis or theory)
    
  • Experiments (tests of all of the above)
    
  • Analysis & interpretation [added by us]
    
  
  
• [3] Check out related posts, or read Robert Maurer's One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way.
  
• [4] A big thanks to Pam Slim of Escape From Cubicle Nation fame for this perspective. If you're thinking about jumping out on your own, give her a call. She's been a tremendous resource.
  
• [5] Check out 10 Strides from Fear to Freedom.
  
• [6] Enjoy The Ride is one of thirteen maxims from Patricia Ryan Madson's delightful little book Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up. For the rest see Whose job is it? Mine!.
  
• [7] From the Procrastination and mental health section of Wikipedia's procrastination entry:

  Procrastination can be a persistent and debilitating disorder in some people, causing significant psychological disability and dysfunction. These individuals may actually be suffering from an underlying mental health problem such as depression or ADHD.
  
  While procrastination is a behavioral condition, these underlying mental health disorders can be treated with medication and/or therapy. Therapy can be a useful tool in helping an individual learn new behaviors, overcome fears and anxieties, and achieve an improved quality of life. Thus it is important for people who chronically struggle with debilitating procrastination to see a trained therapist or psychiatrist to see if an underlying mental health issue may be present.
  
  People who exhibit procrastination and decreased impulse control appear to be prone to internet addiction.

  
  
• [8] "How to Procrastinate Like Leonardo da Vinci": Though the official page is now for subscribers only, I found two other locations: An on-line digital version at The Chronicle of Higher Education - February 20, 2009 and one from the author's site at How to procrastinate like Leonardo da Vinci. Thanks to ever-vigilant reader Amanda for noticing!
  

Join my new IdeaLab newsletter! "Productive tools for the curious intellect"

Ready for a Workout in the Ultimate Brain Gym?

Are you interested in thinking better, working smarter, and being more creative? I invite you to subscribe to my new IdeaLab newsletter. Each month's issue is filled with tips, thought starters, and short reads on fun things like:

• Immediately useful productivity tips (Daily Planning),
  
• Micro book reviews (The Black Swan, Thinking for a Living, Stumbling on Happiness),
  
• Tasty 2x2 matrices (Effort vs. Information, Fun vs. Clothed),
  
• Novel "made me think" quotes ("The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity"), and
  
• "Mind hacks" (Accelerate Your Thinking to Improve Your Mood)
  

Subscribe using the form or simply send an email.

Try it as an experiment!

What's your office/productivity set-up like? Mine's up at The Weekly Review

Chris Bowler over at The Weekly Review asked about my personal productivity setup, which I was happy to supply. It's at Thoughts on Productivity with Matthew Cornell, where I cover:

• Capture


• Tools


• Workflow


• Desk Layout, Filing


• Portability


• Challenges

I'm curious...

• What's your office setup like?
  
• Anything about it you'd like to change?
  
• Any tips or tricks to share?
  

Cheers!

Do, Don't Do, Stop Doing

I had a nice media inquiry last week that highlighted an insight beyond the usual to-do list advice:

So many people run their lives via "to do" lists. What are the advantages of creating "to not do" lists for work and home?

Following is my response, which I had a little fun with. Cheers!

Questions for you

• When does it make sense to stop doing something?
  
• Do you keep a not-doing list?
  
• How do you decide when to review things you're explicitly not doing?
  

Not doing, Stop doing

This is a great question. In the rush of our intense workdays, our instinct is to focus on ever-expanding "to do" lists. This is natural - being busy feels like being effective. But fixating on doing takes us away from two important things: Doing what has the biggest impact on the bottom line (ours or our organization's), and re-examining at a higher level what we're doing in the first place.

There are two parts to "not doing" lists. First is identifying projects or efforts that, while interesting and potentially valuable, simply aren't worth doing at this time. Rather than just dropping them, it's essential to keep a list of these. Otherwise your mind will try to track them for you, degrading your intellectual performance. This is hard, though. Because we want it all, it is difficult to give up. For this reason, it helps to treat this "idea file" [1] (AKA the GTD "Someday/Maybe" list) of project's you're not doing as a dynamic thing. You should review it periodically to evaluate whether it's time to re-activate some of them. Or possibly put them in the dust bin permanently!

Second, there's the idea of the "stop doing" list. In his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't, Jim Collins emphasizes actively shutting down projects that don't pass the test of being something you absolutely love to do, your are fantastic at, and have the greatest ability to generate income. This might require major shifts in direction. Another tool for assessing what to stop doing comes from Richard Koch's book, The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less. He argues that the biggest impact in our work comes from a small number of initiatives (the "vital few") instead of most of what gets our attention (the "trivial many").

Daily Habits

How can people identify habits in their daily lives that should or can be eliminated? And then how do they go about doing so?

A few tools come to mind. At the lowest level, consider evaluating your daily activities using the Urgency/Importance matrix [2]. Popularized by Stephen Covey, it's a tool for judging whether you're working proactively or reactively. Some low-hanging fruit are tasks that are not urgent and unimportant. Going on a media diet (cutting out TV and news, for example) is an easy way to eliminate these.

Another method is to perform some micro experiments to track how you're actually spending your day. There are a number of these, including recording time spent (in 15 minute increments, say), interruptions, repeated work, and quality of "incoming" like email, RSS feeds, and paperwork.

Most importantly, an overarching evaluation of how you work may be in order. Adopting an improved self-management system can help optimize the efficiency of time spent working. Systems like David Allen's "Getting things done" or Mark Forster's Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management are a good start. After all, who wants to spend more time than necessary processing email or deciding the next action to tackle?

As you suggest, making these changes stick can be a challenge - these habits were often formed over many years. Hiring a consultant to get started can be helpful, as is getting a co-worker to be your support person (or better yet, implement them with you!)

Time Wasters

What are some common time-wasters?

Controversially, smart phones like the BlackBerry or iPhone can be massive time sinks. Not only is it very hard to take notes do solid project work (the screens and input tools are simply too limiting), they grab our attention away from the more important tasks at hand. There is plenty of research on multitasking [3] that shows the importance of focusing on one project at a time for large chunks, rather than fracturing our thinking.

There are many things you can do to cut out time-wasters. For example:

• Use the right communication tool for the task. You can replace a dozen back-and-forth emails with a two minute phone call, for example.
  
• Adopt good meeting skills. Invite only people essential to the purpose, have an agenda, stick to it, and finish with clear actions and dates.
  
• Reduce interruptions. In addition to tracking interruptions to diagnose patterns (see above), teach people to use your inbox and voicemail, schedule open door time, and turn off "new email" alerts.
  

Additional thoughts on the subject

In a struggling economy like ours, it is important to step back and get a higher-level perspective on your organization's work. For example, has it brought new opportunities, or is it time to re-evaluate your strategy? However, this kind of thinking requires the mental space that's so hard to find during the day. A few approaches can help, including implementing Innovation Time Off. Like Google's 20-percent time (the source of Maps and GMail) and 3M's 15 percent Rule (Post-It Notes), creating chunks in your schedule for thinking time can have large and unexpected pay-offs. (Sidebar: Check out the LinkedIn question Would Google-style 20% innovation time-off for personal projects work at your company?.)

References

• [1] I use a simply-structured text file, but anything will do, such as Evernote or OneNote. If you have a favorite tool, please let me know.
  
• [2] This is a classic productivity 2x2, of course, made popular by Stephen Covey (my friend Kathy describes it here). Interestingly, the origin of the idea is quietly attributed to former U.S. President and general Dwight D. Eisenhower (though I'm sure it goes back much farther). The now-defunct (anyone know why?) Google Answers addressed it in Originator of the urgency/importance matrix. There are a few variations on this, with the most interesting being:

  Former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said that only two types of papers ever reached his desk, those marked "urgent" and those marked "important." He spent so much time on urgent matters, he complained, that he never got to what was important.

  .
  
• [3] Related: Think You're Multitasking? Think Again, Shortcuts - Multitasking Can Make You Lose ... Um ... Focus, and The Autumn of the Multitaskers.
  

Micro-Experiments

I love the idea using the power of observation to better myself, and I've found that micro-experiments offer a simple, fast, and non-judgmental way to do so. I've collected and tested a handful of them, which I'll share here.

What I mean by micro-experiments:

• Small: Low overhead in starting up.
• Fast: Get results quickly.
• Crucial: Tell us the most amount of information (i.e., at the frontier of our knowledge) with the least amount of effort.

This approach is informed by our nascent Think, Try, Learn effort, which treats everything in your life as an experiment. With, in this case, the application being intellectual performance. However, unlike other posts like these, I'm not claiming they work. Instead I'm suggesting as your fellow scientist-of-life that they could be useful experiments for personal/productive development. Like anything, take assertions with skepticism.

These are non-judgmental by way of using simple record-keeping not to bludgeon your self with guilt, but to simply provide information. I'm repeatedly surprised by how simply and effectively our minds translate this data into improvements. In this I've no doubt been highly influenced by Robert Maurer's One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way.

Following is a list of some I've thought about, a few you've seen before, and hopefully some new ones. If one of these resonates, let me offer a challenge: Try one for 5 or 10 days and report back, either here as a comment, or directly to me.

Good luck!

Sidebar: Some of this clicked while watching IDEO's Tom Kelley: Young at Heart: How to Be an Innovator for Life. Why did the connections happen watching this lecture? I don't know, and this particular case doesn't matter. However, there's a recipe here that does matter: 1) Adopt personal systems to loosen up/lubricate your mind, 2) watch stuff that makes you think, 3) watch the magic happen, and 4) capture it. Facilitating this is why I teach this work.

A big thanks to Susie deVille Schiffli over at InnovationCompass for the pointer. She's a great marketing resource to have on your side.

Questions for you

• What other micro-experiments have you discovered?
• Which micro-experiments have you tried, and what were the results?
• What efforts don't lend themselves to this approach?
• How would you apply this to an media diet?
• Any surprises after doing these?

Table of Experiments

• Repeated Work
• Inbox Quality
• RSS Information Audit
• Time Log
• Procrastination
• Action Input/Output
• Interruptions
• Five-Minute-Only Actions
• Porta-goals
• 60,000 Thought Test

Repeated Work

Stimulated while reading Cut to the Chase: and 99 Other Rules to Liberate Yourself and Gain Back the Gift of Time (and the rule To speed up, slow down in particular), I thought to keep a "repeated work" log. Save your to-do lists (i.e., GTD's Actions list) for a few weeks, then analyze for anything that looks like a redo that you could automate.

Inbox Quality

Over a week or so record for each incoming (email, paper, vmail) whether it relates directly to one of your life goals/objectives. Use a table with two columns, "+" and "-", and fill it with hash marks during the week. For example, if in one sitting you process 10 messages out of your inbox, and 6 relate to goals, make six marks in the "+" column and four in the "-" one. At the end, analyze both the incoming volume during the week (total "+" and "-") and the number of "-". Then start culling.

RSS Information Audit

In the spirit of my post Information Provenance - The Missing Link Between Attention, RSS Feeds, And Value-based Filtering, here's a simple way to analyze the utility of information you've invited into your life. (This assumes that your RSS chops are up-to-speed - see Afraid To Click? How To Efficiently Process Your RSS Feeds.)

1. Select the feed(s) to track.
2. For an approprite time (e.g., two weeks) scan the feed(s) daily and record those that were "hits," i.e., that passed the "Useful Information" test: Did it change the way you think or behave? (Thanks to Dan Markovitz for the genessis of this measure.) To track it just keep a list of feeds, and use tally marks each time a post was useful. Alternatively, if you have idea capture system then use its search or reporting features to track this. (I use a simply-structured text file, but anything will do, such as Evernote or OneNote. If you have a favorite tool, please let me know.)
3. When done, analyze for value, with the threshold of your choice. Your intuition will tell you, and yes, slimming down will be difficult. Just remember, you'll likely encounter anything important again in the future via different ways. Then again, maybe not!

(Note: I'm using "Information Audit" differently from that of libraries. Do you have a better term? See Conducting an Information Audit for the more traditional definition.)

Time Log

This traditional micro-experiment tracks the class of task you're working on at regular intervals, e.g., every 15 minutes. The overhead of performing this is high (you're interrupting yourself after all, but it can be valuable. Analyzing the result of how you spend your time can lead to insights, with opportunities to eliminate waste and improve discipline. For more check out Tips For Tracking And Analyzing Your Time Use.

Procrastination

The 25 Best Time Management Tools & Techniques: How to Get More Done Without Driving Yourself Crazy describes the value of keeping track of tasks you procrastinate on, which you can examine to discern possible causes (and there are many). The author suggests performing the experiment for one week. Record both the activities you postpone and the thoughts and feelings that accompany them, then look for patterns and causes.

Action Input/Output

For one week or so, count daily how many to-dos/actions you create, and how many you check off. Tracking is simple - just use hashes in your calendar, or keep a daily list. Use The Productivity I/O Sweet Spot to evaluate. How do they balance?

Interruptions

In Take Back Your Time: How to Regain Control of Work, Information, and Technology, Jan Jasper suggests keeping an Interruption Log. Simply record who interrupted you, when it happened, the topic, and how long it lasted. Do it for one week, then study and analyze to find preventable ones. Decrease by using and teaching others better communication tools, or by delegating.

Five-Minute-Only Actions

This is a slightly radical one I dreamed up. If you're really stuck in general (i.e., across all your work), try breaking every task/action into five minute chunks. When starting each one just tell yourself you'll only work for five minutes, and stick with it for at least that long. If you really get into it, keep the fire burning and extend as long as you flow. Try this for a week to see if your motivation or progress change. This is a mind hack to overcome the mind's resistance to apparently threatening tasks. It's also an extreme example of chunking down tasks.

Porta-goals

Here's a very common "success strategy" from decades ago. As described in a Time Tactics of Very Successful People, write your personal and professional goals on a 3x5 card and review them aloud at least twice a day. Make sure they're "SMART" (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely - more here), and treat the exercise with a patient, relaxed, and confident attitude. What do you think? Too woo-woo?

60,000 Thought Test

Finally, another radical one that struck me - keep track of the number of internal (i.e., mental) interruptions you encounter during one day. You've probably heard the common notion that we have 60,000 thoughts/day, but testing that requires a lab, a canvas sack of No-Doze, and 15 circus ponies, but here are two ways to play with this:

Distractions/task: Use tally marks to record every time you're pulled away from the task at hand. Start over for each new task. How many did you come up with? During a one-hour conversation I had well over a dozen, some of which I gave into before I caught myself. (Can anyone say "email?")

Constant brain dump: Similar to above, The Secret Pulse of Time suggests "When an unrelated idea crosses your mind write it down, then return to the original task without wasting any further thought on it. The next time you take a break, you will have time to consider that spur of the moment of thought." The author calls this a kind of self control training that capitalizes on the plasticity of the brain, and enhances executive function.