Procrastination, planning, and perfectionism: breaking the habit
Originally published on 18 January 2023
Oh, procrastination my old friend. You would think that with all the articles about how to deal with procrastination and the productivity apps out there, this one would be easy to conquer by now. It isn’t. Battling procrastination requires constant work and check-ins on why you’re doing it.
I have been reading Atomic Habits by James Clear as a way to bring in some good habits but, in the process, I have been breaking some bad ones too. One of my worst habits is procrastination. I don’t procrastinate on work tasks – except the mundane admin ones – but I tend to procrastinate on my big professional goals that require taking me out of my comfort zone or that have a fear of failure attached to them. And, like all habits, my procrastination is consistent.
Planning as Procrastination
It had never occurred to me that one of the ways that I procrastinate the most is through planning. As Clear writes:
It is easy to get bogged down trying to find the optimal plan for change…We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action…I refer to this as the difference between being in motion and taking action. The two ideas sound similar, but they’re not the same. (p. 142)
I am often in motion, planning for my next step or what I want to do in life but rarely take the action. A very simple example but one that illustrates this perfectly is my Sunday morning domestic work. I can sit for 20 minutes planning what will be the perfect and most efficient way to clean the house instead of just taking action and doing it. [Side note: thanks to Atomic Habits, my cleaning-the-house problem has become less laborious because I do it most days without thinking now].
Wasting 20 minutes planning before you get around to cleaning the house is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things but when it comes to more important choices, then you could end up wasting hours, months, years of your life waiting for the perfect time or idea. On the big-ticket items such as forming a new habit around writing or my next career move, I have been in the ‘motion’ phase as opposed to the ‘action’ phase. Clear says that “You don’t want to merely be planning. You want to be practicing. If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection” (p. 143). I have started conquering this by taking Clear’s advice and practising. I now sit down at the same time every evening and just write. No fussing about planning where I’ll sit to write or what I’ll write, I just open my laptop and write.
Perfectionism as Procrastination
Perfectionism and procrastination oddly go hand-in-hand. You want something to be perfect, so you procrastinate on getting it done. I often don’t write because I’m so stuck in my head planning the perfect idea about what I want to write that I never get around to the act of writing. If I do write something, then it often sits in a folder unfinished or unpublished because I don’t feel it is perfect enough and who would want to read this? Again, as Clear points out, “if you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection. You don’t need to map out every feature of a new habit” (p.143). Right now, I am writing for myself. It doesn’t need to be perfect; it just needs to get done. If someone happens to read what I write and takes something from it for themselves, then that’s the bonus.
How to Break the Procrastination Habit
As I said in the beginning, breaking the procrastination habit requires effort and consistently checking in on why you’re doing it. Clear provides more detailed methods for moving from motion into action which you can read about in Atomic Habits but here are a few questions that I asked myself to get out of the procrastination habit on writing:
Why am I in the procrastination loop? (Planning and perfectionism)
What small step can I take that can move me from ‘motion’ to ‘action’? (Create a writing ‘dump’ page so I just open it and write)
How do I make this as consistent as possible? (Write every evening for 15 minutes)
The advice with any new habit is to start with something small and make it as easy to do as possible. As you keep practising – and with consistency – you will find that it builds up to something bigger. The trick is not to fall back into the procrastination loop again. Something I’m about to do if I don’t click publish on this post right now!
Consistency
Habits, repetition, practice, routine – they all go back to my first post of this year about consistency. How do you want to show up in the world every day? This is what I am keeping in mind as I start to move from the ‘motion’ phase to the ‘action’ phase in other parts of my life. It does not matter at first if it is not perfect, it is done. It will get better and easier each time you practise. But to do that, you need to start acting with consistency. To quote from The Daily Stoic for 17 January “just begin the work. The rest follows”.
Alex the Generalist
