Doing one thing to overcome procrastination

I just submitted my final paper for my coach training. (Yay!) As someone with an undergraduate degree in English, and someone who has written blog posts and reports throughout my career, a 10-page paper wasn’t a daunting task. And yet, I procrastinated. I chalked it up to being emotionally exhausted from our final seminar weekend at the beginning of May. We did our coaching evaluations, and it was a rollercoaster ride of anticipation, performing, and then waiting for feedback. And then the following day was another emotional process of saying goodbye to our tight-knit group of coaches, mentors and professors.

So, sure, maybe it’s understandable that I didn’t dig into that paper on the Monday following that exhausting weekend. But why did I keep pushing it down my to-do list again and again?

I have a few theories about what triggers my procrastination.

• Caring deeply about wanting to do well, which can lead to perfectionism

• Feeling vulnerability because the task is very personal and tied to my values

• Not wanting something to be over just yet

• Not believing that the work I’m doing is the right thing to do

• Exhaustion or burnout

I’ve experienced burnout before, but fortunately that’s not a factor right now. In the case of this paper, I think it was a mixture of vulnerability because the paper touches on very personal topics, and some hesitation to close the book completely on this wonderful coach training experience. But I started to worry that I would run out of time to complete this paper in the way I wanted to if I let myself loiter in procrastination for too long. So, I determined that the only way through was by plowing ahead.

Each time I thought about this paper, I thought of it as a whole. I kept telling myself I needed a few large blocks of time to work on it. After all, when I get deeply focused on a writing task, I tend to enter into a flow state where I can lose track of time and churn out a lot of content. In my mind, setting up the ideal conditions to reach that flow state was critical for setting myself up for success with this paper. But that gave me an excuse to delay it again and again.

Just do one thing

Once I decided I needed to push through on this task, I decided to throw out the ideals. Instead, I decided that I would just do one thing at a time, and see what happened from there. My first one thing was to create a new document in Google Drive titled Final Paper. I opened that document in a browser tab. Once the document was open, I decided I could at least jot down key ideas I wanted to include in the paper. It wasn’t a formal outline, just some notes. Then I moved on to other tasks I had planned for the day.

The next day, I opened that document again. My one thing for that moment was to add more notes. I wanted to come out with an outline if I could, but it was more important to just get my hands on this task and do one thing. I did end up coming up with an outline for the paper, which was a pleasant outcome.

The following day I set aside a block of time for writing. I was optimistic about getting a lot done, but I also found myself immediately doing procrastination tasks like checking my email and seeing if my latest LinkedIn post had any comments I should reply to. As soon as I noticed this, I decided that my one thing was just to open the outline and review what I’d written. I closed my other browser tabs, opened the file, and started reading. Once I did that, then the writing started to flow. When I took breaks, I would always make sure my document was open on my screen so that it was the first thing I saw when I got back to my computer.

Happily, I did get to experience some of that flow state and I ended up enjoying most of the writing process. There were some interruptions and some days I didn’t get as much writing done as I’d hoped. But overall, things progressed well. And then I got to that last 5% of the task. The bulk of my paper was done, but I needed to rewrite a section.

This sort of not-fun-but-necessary work is another place where procrastination can take over. Again, I made myself do one thing at a time. In this case, I just highlighted the sections that I wasn’t happy with and wrote comments as feedback to myself. This gave me a tangible bit of progress, and kept my hands in the task instead of doing those procrastination tasks instead. My paper stayed open in my browser for the rest of the day, and I kept chipping away at the next one thing. Replace one paragraph. Read the section before and after to see if it flowed well. Replace another paragraph. Read the paper end-to-end. You get the idea.

What’s your one thing?

When you’re faced with procrastination, what’s one thing you can do to move towards your goal? It can be as simple as creating a document and giving it a title, or putting the ingredients for the dinner you want to cook on the kitchen counter. Just choose one thing to get your hands on the task you want to do, and keep them from straying to those sneaky procrastination tasks.

I’m doing a survey! Perhaps your one thing could be to open the survey in your browser, and read the intro screen to see if it’s something you’d like to take part in. To learn more, check out my earlier blog post on the topic.