There are many reasons that we – or our children – may procrastinate. We might fear that we cannot do the thing we are procrastinating about doing. Or we may feel that the job is just too hard and will take too much work. We might feel conflicted about whether we deserve to succeed and as a result we might procrastinate rather than allowing ourselves to move forward and be successful.

Any and all of these things may be true, and it is important to think about what lies behind our procrastination, or the procrastination that we watch our children engage in. But short of a long analysis, the answer may not be forthcoming.

So, here I am going to offer a few tips.

Daniel Willingham, a cognitive scientist and author of How To Outsmart Your Brain and Why Don’t Students Like School? has some ideas.

I am going to summarize them here — and add a few of my own — because we all procrastinate sometimes, and some people, including some of our children, procrastinate a lot:

1. Think up a reward for after the studying or the job is done. It can be a fun activity, time on a video game, or a treat.

Instead of doing this, many procrastinators put the fun first. They say, “Oh just let me play this video game for a while before I study…” But then they find that they play the video game for longer than they intended and don’t have enough — or any — time left to study. Do the hard thing first. Then do the fun thing.

2. Don’t rely on willpower to get the job done, rely on habit. Set up a time to do work — whether it’s homework or studying or a household project and do this each day. In other words, put aside dedicated time to do what you need to do. And do it either at a certain time of day or as part of a sequence of activities each day. And by “a sequence of activities”, I mean that if , for example, rather than saying you will have your child study at 4PM each day, you say that your child needs to start studying after their afternoon snack or, for a college student, they will study after their daily workout even if that’s not at the exact same time each day.

It takes as long as 60 tries for something to truly become a habit, but Willingham says that by doing the same thing over and over, it WILL become a habit.

And he also says that it takes much less energy to engage in a habit than it does to have yourself (or your child) make a choice to do what they need to do each time they need to do it. Willingham says that establishing work or study as a daily habit is better because you remove the need to choose to do the work. You just do it. You don’t have to decide to do it each time.

3. If you or your child are overwhelmed by how much you have to do, make a to-do list before you start doing anything else. 

4. As part of the to do list, break down each of the jobs into manageable tasks. And then give your child or yourself permission to just do one task at a time. Do not look at the whole list. Do not think about all that has to be done. It’s down on paper. You won’t forget. And you also won’t feel as overwhelmed if you just go one task at a time.

Also – expecting yourself just to do a small amount at a time makes the job more approachable. When I was in grad school I did this with running. I didn’t want to run; I was often just too tired or too busy. But if I told myself I only had to go a mile, I would usually start jogging and end up doing the whole 3 miles — or even more — because once I got going it felt better and easier than expected!

5. When it’s time to work, just start. As Nike says…just do it. Willingham reminds us that things we don’t want to do seem worse to us before we do them. Once we start we often find they aren’t as bad as we predicted.

6. Tell others what you are going to be doing — or have your child do this. This makes you — or your child — accountable. People are more likely to do things that others know they are going to do.

7. Plan breaks. Tell yourself — or tell your child — you only have to work for 10 or 20 minutes and then you can take a break. Often giving yourself or your child permission to take a break after a limited amount of work makes starting the task easier and leads to doing it for longer than the 10 or 20 minutes you allotted initially.

7. Be aware of what you — or your child — say in your own mind about the task and your ability to do it. As I said at the start, often procrastinators think something like, “This is too hard” or “I’m not smart enough anyway, so why even start?” These are self-defeating thoughts and they are often incorrect. Be aware that these might get in the way of starting!

Thank you, Daniel Willingham! We all need help with procrastination!

References

Daniel Willingham, Outsmart Your Brain

Daniel Willingham, Why Don’t Students Like School?