by Kerry Schafer
Procrastination is one of my superpowers. I can put a project off right up until the very last minute and then power-stress my way through getting it done just in the nick of time (whatever a nick of time is). Usually. Sometimes deadlines sneak past me.
In part, this happens because I am spinning way too many plates:
• The novel I’m writing and the required social media and other promo I need to do if I want people to actually find my books.
• The projects I’m working on for my Author Genie clients.
• Recording and producing the One Happy Thing podcast.
• And all the other life things, such as paying bills, buying groceries, doing yard work, and attending to our menagerie of cats and dogs.
I’m constantly working to deadlines, triaging which things really do need to get done next, which provides a convenient excuse for procrastinating. “Obviously,” I tell myself, “I’m not getting that thing done because there are so many other things I have to do first.”
But the truth is, there are projects I manage to avoid even when there is nothing else that needs to be done. Sometimes these are projects that are unpleasant (taxes, anyone?), but more often they are actually things I want to do, but they feel hard, or stressful, or they activate a stream of not-so-helpful commentary from my inner critic.
Here’s a confession: I procrastinated on this article. In fact, I’ve procrastinated on every article I’ve written for the Huckleberry Press. Every month I start out assuring myself that I’ll start writing early, finish early, and surprise the publisher by sending him my work at least a week in advance. This has yet to happen.
And it’s not just the Huckleberry Press articles; it’s writing in general. I love to write, but I’m also often avoidant about working on my novel, creating a newsletter, or even writing an email.
Why? A combination of things. First up, writing is hard sometimes. It requires my thoughts to be clear, concise, and organized; three things that my natural thought processes never are. My brain is a fantastic random-idea generator. It loves finding connections between random events and ideas and gets excited about things that are weird and strange. Which is great fun and all, but lining up my thoughts in a logical order that, hopefully, makes sense to a reader feels like trying to get ducks in a row while also herding cats.
It also feels vulnerable and a little dangerous. My internal critic gets all wound up, especially when I’m writing something like this, flooding me with comments like, “You do know people are actually going to read this, right? Strangers. Worse, possibly people you know. What are they going to think? Are you sure you actually want to tell the whole world about your procrastination problem?”
So, I tend to let all manner of things keep me from putting my butt in the chair to write. Once I do manage to get started, I inevitably hit a spot where my thoughts are muddy or I can’t find the right word, and before I know it, I’ve shifted to a task that is either easier or feels safer or is completely mindless, like scrolling reels on Instagram.
Every time I give myself permission to put something off until later, my brain rewards me with a nice little cascade of happy chemicals. I feel relieved. On the flip side, going back to the task feels just a little bit harder, because I’ve strengthened the neural pathway system that said it was hard in the first place.
I’m sharing all of this with you because this, my friend, is how a procrastination habit is made, and chances are good that you too have a procrastination habit of your own.
Every time we give ourselves permission to “just do it later,” we get rewarded by a positive feeling (relief) and strengthen the avoidance pathway. Which makes it just that little bit easier to put it off again when later comes. And so on.
So how do we change this pattern?
One of my favorite methods is this: choose one action that can be taken in five minutes or less and is so easy that you can’t fail at doing it. Open the document. Locate that paperwork you stashed somewhere. Stand on your treadmill. Put your exercise gear on. And then – that’s it. You have completed the task that you assigned yourself. Celebrate! Yay! Let your brain be flooded with all the feel-good chemicals of success. You did it! You’re golden!
Then – and this is important – set yourself another tiny goal and commit to a time to do it. And again, celebrate when you complete it. Over time, this changes up that pathway in your brain. It learns to reward completion, rather than procrastination. And you really can get a big project done in a series of tiny little steps.
For this article, my first step was to spend five minutes jotting down words and ideas. Easy! No stress. Once I got started, the words came easily, the ideas connected with each other, and my brain was having a little feel-good party about starting four days before the due date. Look at me being all on top of things for once. So I kept working longer than the five minutes.
There was much less resistance to the next small step, which was to come back to it for another five minutes the next day. My perfectionistic streak and my internal critic relaxed for a minute. Nothing to see here, folks, I’m just getting words and ideas on the page, not completing the whole thing in one go and turning it in.
The result? A finished article, sent in on time. Even better, I’ve already got a start on next month and maybe this time I’ll really get it done early. Stranger things have happened.
Colville resident Kerry Schafer (who also writes as Kerry Anne King) is the bestselling author of 15 novels, the co-host of The One Happy Thing Podcast, and a licensed mental health counselor. Find out more at allthingskerry.com.
