How to stop procrastinating
Is there a more postponable task than getting a Real ID driver’s license? I know I have to do it. I’ve made four appointments. And every time, the night before, I’ve canceled — for no other reason than I don’t want to go. I made my fifth appointment this week. Though putting something off may feel, temporarily, like a relief, decades of research have shown an association between procrastination and increased stress, said Itamar Shatz, a social science researcher at Cambridge University. The act of procrastination creates what psychologists call an intention-action gap between the beneficial things we mean to do and the problematic ones we actually do, said Dr. Shatz, the author of the upcoming book “Solving Procrastination: The Science of Why We Put Things Off and How to (Finally!) Stop.” This stalling can take a heavy emotional toll, he added, causing us to feel shame, frustration and helplessness. And you still won’t have that Real ID. So how do we beat the urge to delay and actually get things done? Here are some strategies Dr. Shatz and other experts recommend to stop procrastinating. Start with an easy winWhen you have a chore that’s bedeviling you, Dr. Shatz said, ask yourself: “What’s the smallest possible step I can take right now to make progress?” That could be creating a folder for receipts you’ve been meaning to file, or entering a number into your phone before you actually make a call you’ve been putting off, he said. After you’ve done so, give yourself permission to stop. One reason this tactic can help is that you might just keep going, said Katrina Monton, an assistant professor of organizational psychology at Rutgers’ Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology. “What we see is that once you begin the task, the task itself starts to motivate you,” Dr. Monton said. Make the task more enticingIf you can’t think of any immediate reward for tackling something you’ve been avoiding, create one with “temptation bundling,” said Richard Landers, a professor of industrial-organizational psychology at the University of Minnesota. This is when you “try to put something that you want to happen alongside something that you need to happen,” Dr. Landers explained. To incentivize my D.M.V. visit, for instance, my plan is to stop at a nearby bakery and get some doughnuts with fresh strawberries and custard that I’ve been circling for weeks. Have an if/then planMany of us are aware of our procrastination patterns, Dr. Shatz said. So think of your usual obstacles or distractions and craft a solution, he advised. For example, Dr. Shatz said he sometimes starts to waver before he goes to the gym, so his if/then plan is to tell himself, “Worst case, you can decide to turn right back after you get there.” (He always ends up staying, he said.) If you tend to put off a task by scrolling through social media, “hand your phone to your partner and say, ‘Do not give this thing to me until I finish whatever it is I should be doing,’” Dr. Shatz suggested. Procrastinate betterIf you simply can’t commit to doing a task, Dr. Shatz said, block off a portion of time and ask yourself: How can I still get something useful done, rather than wasting time entirely? Run an easy errand, or prep some vegetables for dinner, he said — something that benefits you but is less intimidating. “Just avoid pseudo-productive procrastination, such as sharpening 50 pencils before you have some paperwork to do, which is not actually productive,” he said. Give a gift to your future selfI was debating whether I should cancel my D.M.V. appointment for the fifth time. But I thought of how pleased I would be with myself once I had gone through with it. “There’s something called self-discontinuity, where we feel that our future self is a bit separate from us,” Dr. Shatz said. So when you are thinking of delaying a task, he said, try to envision how this will make your future self feel. Give yourself a gift, he advised: It can be as simple as filling up your empty gas tank in the evening so it’s one less thing you have to do during the morning rush. Whenever you do something for your future self, he added, be sure to reinforce the good habit by thanking yourself. “When you get into the car, you can say to yourself, ‘Thank you for taking care of this, I would have been late for work if you hadn’t,’” he said. I’m writing this from the D.M.V., where I’m waiting for my name to (finally!) be called. Once I have my Real ID in hand, I know I’ll thank myself profusely. Like this email?
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