Overcoming procrastination:
A proactive approach to stop procrastination

A client, Craig, had a challenging task. After he completed it, he wrote:

“I really worked hard to pull all this together and was happy with the results. I started work on this without delay; new for me. In the end I still ran out of time for the final edit, luckily nothing terrible ended up in there. Almost all of the heavy lifting was done days in advance. It was hard for me to give myself permission to work on this days before it was due despite the obvious importance, but I did it; kept pushing away other urgent projects.”

I asked him for permission to share this with others, because I believe others can benefit from the way he described what he did.

I want to highlight the following in what he wrote:
- "I started work on this without delay"
- "Almost all of the heavy lifting was done days in advance"
- "It was hard for me to give myself permission to work on this days before it was due despite the obvious importance, but I did it; kept pushing away other urgent projects."

The first two points are about giving yourself time. Doing something difficult is not the same as mindlessly filling a form. It is a process, and it’s important to build enough time for “doing the heavy lifting” over time, as opposed to waiting till the last minute.

Craig's third point, the one about priorities, is even more powerful. He says: "It was hard for me to give myself permission to work on this days before it was due despite the obvious importance, but I did it; kept pushing away other urgent projects."

This statement beautifully describes the fact that prioritizing is not just paying lip service to the idea of having priorities. There is a risk involved (not dealing with other urgent projects, despite the nagging voice of the internal critic reminding you that other things are important too).

But one cannot have 57 priorities, any more than one can have 750 close friends. Making priorities means “pushing away other urgent projects”. Sometimes, that’s the only way you can get the most important things done.

I would like to be able to say that it all worked out beautifully for Craig. I am sorry to say it didn’t. It is a fact of life that, sometimes, we do the best we can, we sacrifice other priorities… and it doesn’t always pan out. At such times, we can feel very discouraged, asking ourselves what was the point.

The point is that, unless Craig took the risk of making this task a priority, he didn't have a chance to get the result he wanted.

In a Hollywood movie, when you take a risk, you get rewarded by winning. In real life, you don’t always get rewarded. And this is precisely what makes it difficult to take risks in real life: They’re real risks, not Hollywood risks.

When you make something a priority, you’re taking a risk. You may be making a mistake; you may be calling the wrong shot; all of your efforts may not be enough… But it is still worth it to take some risks: If we only do what we’re absolutely sure will succeed, the one thing we can be sure of is that we’ll have a much more limited life.

See:

- Excuses

- Other business motivational stories

- How to make Resolutions That Work.