Warrior Consulting

Procrastination; we all do it to a lesser or greater extent.
Procrastination in itself is not a negative thing. It’s the consequences that can arise from procrastination that tend to land us in a whole world of hurt.
What is procrastination?
Well, simply put, it is a person’s avoidance of some task that they perceived to carry some level of pain with it. It’s best described as the process of doing one thing when we should be doing something else more pressing or more important.
For example, one day when I was attempting to complete my thesis for a Computing Science degree, my wife came home to find me in the kitchen baking brown bread!!!! She just rolled her eyes and walked up stairs. The bread was gorgeous… but it didn’t get me any closer to completing the thesis.
I completed it in the end and graduated with honors. That’s not so much to say I think I’m great, as to illustrate that, procrastination, while a serious problem, is not the end of the world. It can be embraced!
Another distinction to be made is that, while procrastination will always lead to some level of pain, to be a procrastinator is not all negative.
How can you say that Ronan?
Well, let’s look at the characteristics of a procrastinator.
Primarily, they will do something else instead of what they are supposed to be doing, rather than doing nothing. So, they are NOT lazy. In actual fact they are very task oriented and will attack projects with great energy.
They are very creative people. They are the visionaries who have the ideas or see an application for an idea without necessarily having the implementation skills required to see the project through to fruition.
So, we have an energetic, creative, intelligent, task oriented, visionary.
Is it just me, or does that sound like the description of a great leader?
The only quality a procrastinator falls down on is planning! 
Now, that’s not to say that a procrastinator does not have the ability to plan!
On the contrary, they are well able to plan, if they put their mind to it.
It’s just that planning is not perceived as a priority task!
“Planning” is not “Doing”!
So, it’s the procrastinators’ predisposition to “do”, and their lack of priority on planning, that lands them in trouble. 
Not planning tends to see the procrastinator get caught short on deadlines. They end up doing it all at the last minute.
So how can we combat procrastination?
Well, for starters we need to accept ourselves for what we do.
I tend to procrastinate!
It’s like anything else, half the battle is identifying where the problem lies. Once you identify the problem you can decide on what to do about it.
In accepting that you procrastinate, you state that you have identified where your ineffective behaviours are and that you intend to negate them.
You accept all that goes with being someone who procrastinates, including the positive characteristics I mentioned earlier.
You  procrastinate, which means you tend to put things off. But you are also just one characteristic shy of a great leader! All that is required of you is two things:
·          Stop the ineffective behaviour (procrastinating)
·          Replace it with an effective behaviour (planning)
Now, give yourself a break. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Be gentle, it’s going to take some practice and self discipline to bring this under control. Remember, you tend to procrastinate; the tendency will always be there to put stuff off. Your goal is to reduce the negative consequences of this behaviour until they are negligible. And it would be preferable to do this without beating yourself up along the way!
Positive Language
People who procrastinate are self imposed victims of wooly, fuzzy, non committal and confusing situations that lead to a form of decision paralysis, stopping them from getting anything at all done towards the completion of a task.
I say self imposed because, as human beings, the language we use is instrumental in manifesting our environment. If we use positive language, we develop a positive outlook and our environment follows suit to become a positive one. The same is true for the negative, the non committal, the fuzzy etc.
To make lasting improvement in our levels of procrastination we have to keep our language in check.
Stop using non committal and negative language, especially the word “should”.
Procrastination is doing one thing when you should be doing something else more important. If you remove the ‘should’, that definition falls apart.
Speak the environment you want to operate in.
If you are against something, twist your language so that you are for it’s opposite.
I’m against war. I’m for peace. Same statement but the sentiment is different.
‘If’ becomes ‘when’, ‘should’ becomes ‘will’, there’s nothing you ‘can’t’ do and ‘maybe’ doesn’t exist anymore.
Remember, we are working away from indecisiveness towards decisiveness. So you may say “There ARE some things that I can’t do”.
Well, that may be, but there are lots of other ways to say that.
So when your friends call you to go to the cinema but you have work to do, it boils down to a decision which you have the power to make. If the enjoyment you would get from going to the cinema is over shadowed by the pain involved with missing that deadline then it’s not a case that you “can’t go”… it’s more that you would “prefer to get this work done!!”
In everyday conversation if you find yourself using non-committal shoulds, fuzzy maybes and indecisive ifs, stop and rephrase the sentence in a more positive light. This is also going to take a lot of practice. It won’t happen over night, but you can work on this in parallel with the other steps. Perhaps if you take it one not-so-positive word at a time, eliminating it and replacing it with its more positive counterpart, you’ll find it easier.     
With your new positive language compose a statement that will champion you in times of doubt. Something like:
I am a great leader. In addressing my procrastination everyday I am enhancing my positive qualities, increasing my productivity and positively inspiring others.
Try to use your own words. That way it is more meaningful to you and will have more of an impact. Print it out and stick it somewhere you will see it every day and then read it regularly.
 
Get Organised
Habits are not broken. They are replaced with other habits.
If you’re doing it right you will replace your bad habits with good ones. In this case procrastination is a bad habit because it results in stress, fear and can have some fairly serious consequences when it becomes chronic.
Procrastination when coupled with a lack of structure, usually leads to that overwhelming dread when all you can see is the whole, none of the parts and it looks insurmountable. So, central to our attack on procrastination is the introduction of structure. Yep, you guessed it, we’re going to plan, prioritise and get organised.    
The first step is to view the process of planning not as a task to be completed before work can commence, but as part of the work. This harks back the comment I made about a procrastinators attitude to planning. So the planning gets scheduled as task #1 in the plan. 
Most successful projects begin with a good plan, so lay out tasks and work.
Ask questions like:
What do I need to accomplish?
What are the goals?
What’s the timeline?
What resources will I need?
How many of the resources do I control?
Who controls the rest?
Set goals and measures. This will help focus your time and efforts. When you are setting your goals you should aim to keep them SMART. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-based.
Specific: You need to be clear about goals, how they are going to be measured, and what the rewards and consequences associated with achieving or not achieving them will be. And for goodness sake, when you achieve a goal, reward yourself. You deserve it! You’ve just dealt a resounding blow to procrastination.
Measurable: How will you tell if the goal is accomplished?
Achievable: To set a goal that you were never going to be able to achieve is counterproductive at the best of times, but where a person who procrastinates is concerned it can be tragically fatal to their efforts to combat procrastination. It acts as confirmation that planning doesn’t work… “I planned and I still screwed up!” This can then be used as an excuse (either consciously or subconsciously) not to try further. It is very important in this regard that it is possible for you to achieve the goal in the first place.
Realistic:  Given your present set of circumstances, experience levels, skills set etc. is it realistic to say that you will achieve this goal by the deadline you have set?
Time-Based: A deadline can be a powerful motivator. Even people who procrastinate can operate well to deadlines when they have prioritised their work properly.
When setting yourself deadlines, remember one of Murphy’s Laws.
It takes 90% of the time to do 90% of the project, and another 90% of the time to finish the remaining 10%.  In other words, always give yourself more time then you think it will take to complete the task.
Prioritise your goals. If you are worrying about the fact that you have done no work on something that you don’t even need to be working on until later, then you are worrying needlessly. Not only that but you are affecting your focus on the things you do need to be working on right now! But, you’re never going to know what needs to happen and when, unless you sit down and prioritise your goals.
One way to prioritise is to take your goals and separate what you need to do into:
·          Essential
·          Important to get done
·          Nice to have
·          Not central to what I’m trying to achieve.
Now, when you are faced with choices or multiple things to do, apply the scale and always choose the highest level.
Another technique is based on Lominger research showing that effective managers typically spend about half their time on two or three key priorities.
Ask yourself the question: On what tasks need I spend half my time?
Now you have planned your approach, so you know what is required by what date. When something else comes up you also have a decision support mechanism to help you distinguish between mission critical and not so important.
Then comes the fun bit, “doing” the project!! You’re already good at that so we don’t need to pass too much comment here.
Just two other techniques that I use in this regard, that work very well.
Firstly, I tend to do 10% of the work immediately. That way I can better judge how long the whole project will take.
Lastly, I source an external point of accountability, usually my wife for her sins!
It doesn’t necessarily have to be anyone involved in the project, just someone who is aware of your plan. Sit with them, explain your approach and ask them to check up on your progress regularly. It could be a parent, a sibling or friend. Just someone who wants to see you do well!
It’s amazing the amount of focus instilled by the prospect of a regular update meeting.
 
After that, it’s practice, practice, practice!
So to summarise our approach to combating procrastination:
1.        Accept that you tend to procrastinate – including all the inherent positives as well as the ineffective behaviours
2.        Check your language – replace negative or non-committal language with more positive words and phrases
3.        Get organised – View planning as part of the project, not as a separate task
4.        Persistence – don’t give up. Keep plugging away. The more you practice he more second nature it becomes

I was in Galway at the weekend. I was set to give a seminar to students and lecturers on the Creative Power of Positive Thought, ironically enough. Unfortunately, there was a fire in the college and the electricity was knocked off across the campus. As a result the seminar was canceled and no amount of positive thinking was going to put it back on.
I spoke with an inspirational lady who had been my contact in the college on the phone. She was commiserating with me at the cancellation.
However, I was feeling kind of philosophical at the time, having had a wonderful weekend with my wife and a couple of really close friends who were home for the long weekend. So, while I was disappointed, I chose not to get stressed over it.
Wishing to convey this mellow attitude to the lady, I said:
“Sure, everything happens for a reason…. I don’t believe in coincidence, anyway…”
Now, usually you would expect a “How true” reply, or at the very least a dubious nod, hiding an internal exclamation of “Weirdo!!” … But no, not on this occasion! The reply I received was:
“Oh, I’m the opposite…. I don’t believe in Fate”
To which I thought to myself, “Well, neither do I”, at least not in the traditional sense of being at its mercy. Perhaps she had misunderstood or perhaps I had misrepresented my opinion. Either way, it was her comment that made her a inspiration to me, because as a result I felt compelled to address my attitude to Fate.
I figure that as human beings we have the unique characteristic; Free Will. It’s what sets us apart from the animals. God gave it to us and he sure meant for us to use it. The majority of the time we do, but unconsciously. We react to situations that arise rather than consciously being aware of circumstances, identifying their potential consequences and choosing an appropriate response.
 

Unconscious use of our Free Will is like sitting on a couch watching the TV. All our muscles still work, but there must be a stimulus to which they react:
“Am Hungry”…. “Must get up and get a bag of nachos from the press!!”
Or:
“This show is boring”.. “Engage thumb to change channel with the remote”
Conscious use of our Free Will, on the other hand, is like going to the gym. There are machines for every muscle grouping. We know that this machine requires us to use these muscles and that these are the benefits of this exercise. It is focused and we need to have a keen awareness around our balance, breathing and posture in order to get the best results from our time there. 
Likewise, developing a keen awareness around the use of our Free Will ensures we get the best results from the decisions we make.
Free Will is just like a muscle. If we don’t use it we lose it.
The more we use it, the better we get at using it. The better we get at using it, the more we recognise about the circumstances surrounding its use. The more aware we are of our circumstances, the more we build a catalogue of appropriate responses. The more responses we have, the more effective we become at flexing our Free Will muscles.
Fate, to my mind, is the lady that provides me with the opportunities to flex these Free Will muscles. She facilitates a set of circumstances. What happens next is up to me and depends on a number of factors:

• My alertness to the circumstance and what it means to me
• What’s going on right now?
• How do I feel about it?
• What do I want to learn from this situation?
• My attitude to choice
• Do I have one or not?
• My will to decide and follow through
• Do I want to lead or follow?

So, rather than there being a polar opposition between Fate and Free Will, I believe one facilitates the development of the other. All that is required is awareness around both. Simple! Huh?
Think about it though! “Stuff” happens everyday… every minute or more precisely every moment we’re awake and, some might argue, when we’re asleep too!
We can choose to drift, oblivious to what’s going on around us, or we can stay awake and ask “What now?”
 
I believe it’s not what happens to us, but the way we respond that makes us who we are. 
Personally, I think Fate has got a bum rap over the years. She seems to have this reputation as the “Great Destroyer”. I prefer to see her as the “Great Facilitator”.
Look out for Fate everyday. Listen for her whispers in your ear. It could be a chance encounter or the words of a work colleague. Once you recognise her voice you’ll see just how much time she’s spending with you. When you truly hear what she’s saying you’ll realise she’s only presenting you with the opportunity of experience. What you do next dictates whether you drift or drive through life.
The choice is yours.