How to finally beat procrastination

The most common learning problem

Perhaps the most common problem a lot of my clients have is procrastination. They know roughly what needs to get done but they cannot bring themselves to do it. It is like there is a mental block preventing them from sitting at their desk and cracking out the textbook.

But over the years I have acquired some insight into how procrastination works, and more importantly, how to defeat it.

So here are my top 5 tips for beating procrastination:

1. The Origins of Procrastination

People often think that procrastination is the result of laziness, or some moral failing, but in my experience, even the most diligent and hardworking people can fall into procrastination. The true cause is normally one of two things: lack of clarity, or fear.

Sometimes we know vaguely what we need to do. We might need to “work on our vocab” or “get stuff done” but we won’t have a specified list of tasks, and this is a recipe for procrastination. Like distraction procrastination strikes in the gaps where we don’t know exactly what we need to do next. So try to specify exactly what needs to get done. One of my students finds it helpful to know exactly the number of words he needs to write each day, and says this has drastically reduced his procrastination.

On the other hand, some people procrastinate because they are scared. They are scared of getting things wrong, scared of getting a bad mark, or scared of feeling like a failure if they don’t understand the work. This is particularly prevalent among perfectionists. And here the goal is to make the work seem less scary. And this is just what our next tip aims to do.

2. Breaking it Down

Sometimes the way to beat procrastination is to take a big task and smash it into the smallest possible pieces so that you can reconstruct it as a series of tiny, manageable tasks. I know what you are thinking, “I have heard this before”. And it is true that this is tried and tested wisdom. But how many of us actually do this regularly to our most daunting pieces of work?

If you have an essay, break it down by topics, then by paragraphs, and finally by sentences. This has the bonus of making your goals much more specific, which connects nicely with our first point.

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If you want to work with an experienced study coach whose previous students include those at Cambridge and the LSE, then contact me at josephfolleytutoring@gmail.com.

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3. The 5-minute rule

This is another strategy to make the workload seem less crushing. It is a sort of mental trick where you tell yourself “I am only going to work on this for 5 minutes. If I want to stop then, I can, but I must complete this 5 minutes”. And you are not lying to yourself. If you truly stop after 5 minutes that is fine! But many people find that after the 5 minutes, they don’t feel like stopping. They are beginning to get into the flow of work and they want to keep going. I have known people to complete hours-long study sessions after saying they would just work for 5 minutes.

This works primarily because when we procrastinate we are normally afraid of starting the work. That is what feels scary to us. Once we are sat at our desk and a few minutes in, we realise that far from being terrifying, the work is perfectly doable.

4. Working with friends

This one is highly context-dependent. If you are the kind of person who finds working with friends highly distracting, then you can safely disregard my words here. But if you find you work well with your friends, this is a fantastic strategy for beating procrastination. This is for two reasons.

The first is that you actually have to commit to working in the same place and at the same time as your friend. This exploits the fact that humans tend to be more likely to follow through on a behaviour when we have made a promise to someone else. We feel our social reputation is at stake and that gives us extra motivation to get working.

Secondly, if your friend is sitting across from you, working diligently, a natural competitive urge can arise. We don’t want to be sitting on our phones when our friend is showing their focus, diligence, and discipline to the world. So we again have an extra source of motivation to get our head in the game and the pen in our hands.

5. Self-reflection

Ultimately, the best long-term strategy for beating procrastination is to observe the contours of your own mind. What is going through your head when you think about work? Is it fear? Confusion? Boredom? Each person has their own unique relationship with work, and so has unique causes of procrastination. But once you know the causes, it is much easier to come up with solutions that are tailor made for you.

So my best piece of advice would be to get to know why you procrastinate, and tackle that directly. Some key questions to ask here are:

How do I feel about work?

What work do I procrastinate on and what work do I find it easy to do? What is the difference between them?

When have I felt very motivated to work?

When I am procrastinating a lot, how do I feel?

Best of luck and happy studying.

In other news, I have a video on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment coming out later today. I have worked very hard on it and it is by far the longest video I have posted, so I hope you enjoy it.

All the best,

Joe