Team Taskmaster

The final days of Team Taskmaster are nigh, so I’m resurfacing some of the past year and a half’s most popular or on-point posts. Today, I want to talk about procrastination. (Yes, right now!)

I’m a fabulous procrastinator. In fact, that’s probably at least in part why I chose journalism as a career: Without drop-dead deadlines looming over me, I’d never get any writing done.

Since I recognize this tendency in myself, I’m also constantly on the lookout for ways to battle my “I’ll get to it later” syndrome.

Luckily, there’s plenty of fodder out there. I’ve discovered, for instance, that procrastination is an expensive habit. And that when I’m facing an onerous task, the best way to begin is to start small.

Keeping track of what you’re doing, and when you’re doing it, can help minimize distractions and detours, so check out these 10 ways to manage your time better. Viewing an Internet outage as an opportunity (or voluntarily turning off your connection) can also help keep you on track.

Plenty of people are fans of the two-minute rule for clearing out the small tasks that can derail your larger projects. You’d also do well to minimize distractions, especially when working from home — where it’s oh-so-easy to get led astray.

But don’t forget, while procrastination inevitably involves delays, not all delays are procrastination. And sometimes, procrastination can signal some hidden truths. And don’t feel as if your procrastination is a character flaw; turns out we can blame our brains.

In the end, while it’s great to work on minimizing your procrastination tendencies, work shouldn’t be a long, humorless to-do list. So don’t beat yourself up too much. After all, you always get more done when you’re having fun.

(image by der sich den wolf tanzt via Flickr, CC 2.0)

Food for thought: Your procrastination habit isn’t your fault. Your brain is to blame.

That’s right — we’re hard-wired for it. That because our brains trick us into procrastinating, saysTimothy A. Pychyl, Ph.D. Pychyl notes that five innate quirks of the brain (as described by David Rock, in a posting about why all self-help books sound the same) create a perfect storm for procrastination.

• Quirk 1: The brain is built to firstly minimize danger, before maximizing rewards.
  Procrastination Effect: We avoid tasks that threaten the self, and we discount future rewards in favor of immediate gratification.
• Quirk 2: Too much uncertainty feels dangerous. It feels like possible pain so we avoid it.
  Procrastination Effect: Uncertainty — not knowing what to do next — is scary. Delaying a task becomes a way of coping with or avoiding that fear.
• Quirk 3: Our conscious processing capacity is small, which makes us terrible at a lot of things, including predicting what might make us happy.
  Procrastination Effect: It’s difficult for us to set realistic goals — or stick to them.

For the other two quirks, read Pychyl’s full post on Psychology Today.

And if you choose to do that later or not at all, remember: It’s not your fault. Blame your brain.

(image by brunosan via Flickr, CC 2.0)

Ever find yourself struggling to complete a task because it seems so daunting? We’ve all been there. Envisioning all the steps that need to be taken to get to “done” can be overwhelming. But if you reduce the friction that’s holding you back, says Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, it’s easier to reach completion.

What’s friction? Things like procrastinating, distractions, meetings, or even being intimidated by a big project. Focus on the friction and eliminate it, and you’ll find yourself moving forward.

Even better, think small. Start by getting the small things done to build momentum. For example, Barbauta explains how he launched a new minimalism blog (mnmlist.com) in just three days:

One day to buy the domain, set up Wordpress, and find a theme to start from. Another day to tweak the theme to what I wanted and write a few posts. A third day to write more posts and announce it on Twitter and here on Zen Habits. Three days, and I was at Done.

Starting a new blog might seem like a big challenge, but it’s not so bad when you break it down into bite-sized pieces.

So think “small” to get your project rolling, reduce friction points where you can, and enjoy the fruits of your labors a lot more quickly and easily than you might think.