Have you ever procrastinated?
I’ll admit that I’ve procrastinated my fair share, so it’s okay, there’s no shame here.
I find myself procrastinating on emails I need to send, chores I need to do, conversations I want to have (specifically if I know they will be uncomfortable or difficult), exercising, and completing various work tasks.
Recently, after a small bout of procrastinating on a couple work tasks, I started to think about how procrastination relates to my work as a time coach.
Procrastination is not solely based in time management. It’s not always about not having time to do something, often it’s not making time (deliberately avoiding time) for whatever it is we’re procrastinating on.
To avoid it, we are putting value on other, more enjoyable options that may offer immediate pleasure (I’m going to go find a snack instead of sending this email). We also place value on the avoidance itself (I’m going to find something, anything to do that will allow me not to do the thing I’m procrastinating on).
There is a good chunk of research surrounding procrastination, and one of the concepts that really stands out to me is that procrastination leads to poorer quality work and less personal well-being.
While we may think the last minute race against time to complete something helps us focus and get it done, it may truly be hurting the work itself as well as our own wellbeing.
That certainly got me thinking, because I value producing quality work, and I value maintaining my personal wellbeing. Ultimately, procrastination serves as a passive way of spending my time, a passive expenditure that leads to stress and guilt. As I thought about this in the realms of time coaching, I realized there were ways I could be more proactive with my time.
While there probably isn’t an easy, universal answer for avoiding procrastination altogether, I want to share a strategy I use that helps me be proactive when procrastination strikes.
I call it the 5-Minute Method. It is the result of me asking the question, what can I do with five minutes? Is there a way to utilize such a small period of time to hone my focus, avoid procrastination, create mindfulness, avoid exhaustion, and enhance my productivity?
The answer: yes, absolutely! In fact, there are many ways to utilize five minutes to my benefit.
In this case of procrastination my answer is simple, start.
When I become aware that I’m trying to procrastinate on something, I will challenge myself with this low-pressure instruction – spend five minutes, just five little minutes, on this task.
I have no expectation whatsoever that I’ll complete the task in five minutes. But that’s the point.
When we want to procrastinate on something, there tends to be reasons behind that – the task feels daunting, it feels like it’s going to take a lot of time or energy, it feels like it’s going to be boring or demanding, etc. When we lump the task into this big looming thing, we’re more likely to lean into the procrastination and avoid it completely.
Often we stoke our bouts of procrastination through our thinking. This task becomes large and daunting because we think about it as that, and we worry about it. The task becomes unappealing because we think about it as that, and then we build that up in our heads. We spend this time creating a story about the task, while not actually addressing the task.
When this happens, starting becomes an obstacle.
However, if we minimize that pressure we can lower the barrier to entry. Five minutes feels like a small commitment. We’re not solving the world’s problems in five minutes, we’re simply giving the task a little space.
And maybe the task is large and effortful and challenging. That’s okay. We can still approach it with this 5-Minute Method to make small amounts of progress.
Truthfully, this application of the 5-Minute Method often has another benefit – once we get started, we may build momentum and keep going.
Who knows, five minutes here, another five minutes there, a boost of momentum and a five minutes turns into 30 minutes…bit by bit this daunting task becomes manageable.
The trick here is to shift our thinking away from the dauntingness of the task, away from feeling like we don’t quite have enough time or energy right now to work on it, and toward the idea that we do have a little bit of time and energy right now, and we can use that to focus, even for a just a brief period, on making progress on this task.
Research on procrastination boils it down to this, “procrastination is the absence of progress.”
So if we can strategically take even five minutes to make a little bit of progress, we’re setting ourselves up for better quality work, less time and energy spent procrastinating (and less of the stress and guilt that comes along with it), and better personal well-being.