Here’s how to be your own worst enemy – procrastinate. We all know it’s true, but most of us are guilty of this self-defeating behavior from time to time. After all, who hasn’t put off doing something until the last minute? Unfortunately, procrastination accomplishes little except causing extra stress, especially on the job.
We can come up with loads of excuses, including being bombarded with all sorts of 21st century distractions including a constant flow of email and our social media connections. However pushing aside tasks for another day isn’t a new problem. In fact, it’s probably been a bad habit since humans began working eons ago.
 In their book Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do about it NOW (De Capo Press), psychologists Jane B. Burka and Lenora M. Yuen point out that thousands of years ago, the ancient Egyptians documented the problem of putting off until tomorrow (or the next day or the next day or the next…) what should be done today. They had one word that denoted the useful strategy of avoiding unnecessary work, but another that denoted the self-defeating form of procrastination that involves waiting too long to accomplish an important task.
In modern times, researchers have found that chronic procrastination is a problem in about 25 percent of U.S. adults. And studies show that about 95 percent of those who frequently procrastinate want to break this bad habit because it impacts work performance and the overall quality of their life.
If procrastination makes us feel so bad, why do we do it? According to Burka and Yuen, who conduct procrastination workshops and created the first American procrastination treatment group at the University of California at Berkley, there’s no single answer for everyone. However the most common reasons include fears about failure as well as success, worries about control, our concept of time and differences in the ways our brains process information and react to distractions.
Fortunately, you can make changes and learn to get things done sooner rather than later. Here are five tips to help procrastinators break the putting-it-off habit.
Stop being a perfectionist. Waiting to finish – or even start – a project because you want every detail to be exactly right can stop you in your tracks. Perfectionist tendencies can bog you down on one or two tasks while your overall responsibilities suffer. Taking action, even if there are a few things you’ll need to revise later on, is better than taking no action.
 Break down big tasks into smaller chunks. Princeton University’s McGraw Center for Learning advises what their procrastination experts call the “Swiss Cheese” approach. Break down big tasks into little, specifically defined ones and then tackle the smaller “chunks” one by one. The work ahead won’t seem so daunting because you’ve punched holes in it (like Swiss cheese) and you’ll get a psychological boost as you see progress in going forward instead of procrastinating. If you are working on a big project with a deadline that is weeks or months in the future, break it into sections. Assign each task to a day on the calendar and spend a specific amount of time on it, even if it’s just 15 minutes.
Change your perspective about things you dread doing. Procrastination is often a way to put off things that you dread because they are challenging or unpleasant. However, if you are procrastinating about work projects that seem difficult or boring, Burka and Yuen say consciously changing your attitude about your tasks can help you tackle them. Consider how good you’ll feel when you tackle the very things you put off. It’s also helpful to reward yourself when you’ve completed a certain task. For instance, you could order your favorite dish the next time you go out to eat, or rent a movie you’ve wanted to see after work.
Learn to say no to empty tasks. In Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do about it NOW, the authors point to a frequently cited guideline in time management called the “80/20” rule. It states that 20 percent of most people’s tasks are important and yield the most results. On the other hand, 90 percent of tasks aren’t so crucial and contribute little. You can find more time by learning to say “no” to trivial non-essential activities that bog you down and feed any procrastination tendencies. For example, do you really have to clear off your desk before beginning a work assignment with a looming deadline? Skip the non-essential desk cleaning and instead concentrate 80 percent of your time on starting and finishing the truly vital task in front of you.
Set personal deadlines. Reorganizing how you spend your day and staying on top of your schedule can help you feel more in control and less likely to procrastinate. But don’t only follow deadlines from supervisors -- impose your own specific “must do” timeframes for working on certain tasks. Procrastination experts Burka and Yuen explain it’s important to stick to time limits, too, when you start tackling things you’d rather put off. “Your success is based on following through with your intentions and honoring the agreement you made with yourself. This builds trust and confidence in you, valuable feelings many procrastinators have lost,” they explain.
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