How I’m beating procrastination to be a better business owner and mom.

 

Procrastination can tank your dreams. 

 

I have been a pro-procrastinator for as long as I can remember. I can remember a time before I even knew what to call it. I started to have negative beliefs about myself.

 

Over the past 15 years of studying relationships, brain development, trauma, and emotional intelligence, I have come to learn a great deal about:

 

• Why people procrastinate.
• How procrastination harms you and the people around you.
• Compassion for the procrastinator. 
• Strategies that help change habits to reduce the grip that procrastination has on a person. 

 

After years of trying to push past it.

I finally made some headway. Everything I’m doing now falls into 3 categories of effort: mild, medium, and challenging. What I’m doing may not work for you, but it might just spark some of your own ideas. 

 

My easy practices that help procrastination busting includes:

 

• Spend time at the start of a task thinking about how I will feel once it is accomplished.
• Write or draw out the steps to accomplish the task.
• Jot down my motivation in accomplishing the goal. 

 

Those simple and quick steps have helped me with the small items. Sometimes when there is a bigger, more challenging task at hand I have to dig a little deeper and make a plan. 

 

Other things I found helpful when my procrastination kicks into higher gear. This normally happens when there is an emotional element mixed into or around the task at hand. 

 

The effortful techniques that help me: 

 

• Get focused by cutting out all distractions. (Not easy as a mom of 3 kids, 2 dogs and an on-call doula who is anxiously attached to my cell phone but it helps SO much.) 
• Cut out visual distractions. 
• Have a pep talk with myself. Short and sweet and something that I can say over and over when I get stuck. 
• Ginger tea or another strong flavored beverage. I like to eat junk food when I’m stressing out. I’m trying to transition my cookie habit into something more sustainable. I take sips of this power packed beverage, experience the sensation in a mindful moment, then get back to the task at hand.
• Power nap. I set my timer for about 15 min, put on some soft music and let my mind have a break. Once in a while some cool ideas flow in and I am energized to move forward. 

 

The more challenging and time consuming techniques that helped me beat procrastination:

 

Another powerful strategy that helped me was to look for the procrastination triggers. 

 

Just thinking about what leads up to me tossing all my good plans into the trash bin has been useful. I can avoid those experiences if possible, and if I am triggered use some or all of the strategies listed above to fortify my resolve. An example of this is starting a project between meal times because I get thinking about snacks and then I detour to the kitchen. By starting a project right after a meal, or sometimes planning my food/snacks in advance, I am able to stay the course and not get sidetracked by food. Because when there is a big project looming, I surely need to make the most extravagant meal and likely go to the market for one or more of the ingredients. ; ) 

 

One of the problems I have found is that I am a productive procrastinator. 

 

I don’t get distracted watching TV or scrolling on my phone. What gets me is bathroom molding that is dusty, or plants that need to be watered, and my dogs that seem to always need something or other to keep them happy. To help with these distractions I will try and do some tidying and organization the night before I have a big project planned so that I’m less likely to dive into cleaning projects. Other times I’ll set an alarm and organize for a set amount of time before starting. I tend to do a better job on all of my tasks when the environment is more visually calm. 

 

Taking a deep dive into what it looks like when I am crushing it. 

 

Learning what I need to really come alive and be motivated has really helped. For me this means when I’m working to support someone else or working on a team project. If I have someone who is holding me accountable or depending on me to come through I am 110% more productive and focused. If I know what motivates me I can go back to the easy techniques and visualize in a way that connects my desired goal to my motivation. It turns into a feedback loop that has been life changing.

 

 

The changes I write about above have been evolving over the years and were refined over a 6 month span of time when I was really wanting to enhance my productivity. During this period I read a number of books on business, habits, and self sabotage. 

 

Here are the 3 that I recommend. They helped me stop procrastinating and get more work done. 

 

Stop Self-Sabotage, Judy Ho, PhD

The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg 

It’s Not Always Depression, Hilary Jacobs Hendel 

 

I’m not suggesting that you do exactly what I have done.

I have know idea what will help you. What I do know is that I have spent the majority of my life wasting too much time. If I have time to work, I want to maximize the potential impact it will have on my clients. Dorking around is not going to serve any of us. 

 

I hope you are able to find your motivation and create some new habits so that you can get out there and do what you want to do! 

 

Thanks for reading, 

 

Amity