When it comes to getting things done, whether we’re a student completing a homework assignment, a manager meeting a deadline, or whatever, most of us procrastinate.
And this quality that makes procrastinators out of us all has nothing to do with being lazy, research suggests. In fact, the best procrastinators are famous for bursts of energy and high productivity right before a deadline, which is pretty much the opposite of laziness.
In a speech this afternoon before the McLean County (Ill.) Chamber of Commerce, Becky Ropp, director of talent management at Bloomington-based Growmark, told administrative professionals that 94 percent of people say that procrastination hurts their happiness, the Bloomington Pantagraph reports. So we are inclined to ask, Why, if procrastination keeps 94 percent of us from being happy, do 100 percent of us do it on a regular basis?
Basing her speech on Brian Tracy’s book Eat that Frog; 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time and aiming it at administrative professionals, Ms Ropp gave people the age-old advice that the best way to avoid procrastination is to tackle the most difficult problem in the earliest part of the day. Mr Tracy’s book likens projects to frogs, and the harder the problem, the uglier the frog, she said.
“If you have more than one frog, eat the ugliest first,” Ms Ropp was quoted as saying. “If you have to eat a live frog, it doesn’t pay to sit there and look at it.”
So, what can we do to avoid the drawbacks of procrastination? Princeton University, where procrastinators can be found at every level, has provided some tips that we think are generally useful. Here are three of my favorites from the extensive list:
- For school work, choose wisely where and with whom you work. Repeatedly placing yourself in situations where you don’t get much done and are easily distracted—such as “studying” in your bed, at a café or with friends—can actually be a kind of procrastination, a method of avoiding work.
- Set goals and focus on what you want to do, not what you want to avoid. Think about the productive reasons for doing a task by setting positive, concrete, meaningful learning and achievement goals for yourself.
- Swiss Cheese It by breaking down big tasks into little ones. A variation on this is devoting short chunks of time to a big task and doing as much as you can in that time with few expectations about what you will get done. For example, try spending about 10 minutes just jotting down ideas that come to mind on the topic of a paper or skimming over a long reading to get just the main ideas.