A huge barrier to living the way we’d like to see ourselves live, and doing the things we know we need to do, is that we frequently just don’t feel like it when it’s time to take action. Put that together with the story we then tell ourselves about how we’ll feel like it later, and we have a perfect recipe for procrastination. The video and article below discuss the compounding spiral of what usually happens next, and suggest a different way of approaching the challenge of taking action.
What Happens When We Procrastinate Instead of Taking Action
We justify procrastination in all sorts of ways. As humans we’ll provide ourselves with any and all reasons we can think of to avoid actually taking action and doing what we know we need to do.
Research tells us that procrastination happens for two general reasons: One, we feel like we’re in the wrong mood or internal state to complete a task in the moment, and two, we assume our internal state will change in the future, and then we’ll be productive.
Of course, the problem here is that it bases our ability to take action entirely on a constantly shifting and often-unpredictable internal state. We get stuck believing we need to feel a certain way before we can do what needs to be done. And when it’s time to take action and we don’t feel like it, from this paradigm the only option is to put it off for later. To procrastinate.
Related Article: (VIDEO) The Skill of Taking Action When You Don’t Feel Like it
And then it often gets worse. Putting off a task we need to do makes us feel anxious, guilty, ashamed, or more stressed. Subsequently, the next time we approach that task, odds are good we’re going to be met by all that extra stored up stress and anxiety, which makes it even more difficult to get started. And so we put it off again, producing even more stress the next time…and so on and so forth.
Before we know it all our energy is sucked into avoiding and holding off all that built up stuff, instead of being directed toward the actions and behaviors of doing something.
I want to acknowledge this is all very hard, very normal, very human stuff. Also, sometimes not doing something that needs to be done is in fact the best or healthiest decision, for a variety of reasons. But we’ve all run into times when procrastination takes over where it didn’t have to.
Switching Up the Paradigm is Key to the Skill of Taking Action
The usual paradigm described above is the ‘feel like it’ paradigm–aka motivation. Motivation is fantastic as a resource, especially when it shows up when we need it most. But it’s an unpredictable, fickle, and limited resource.
An alternative to the motivation paradigm is to break out of the belief that we have to have certain thoughts and feelings show up before we take action. And then to accept whatever feelings are or are not there, save the energy we would typically spend fighting with our thoughts/feelings, and instead direct that energy on actually taking steps. At the very least, we can get started, and avoid the procrastination cycle.
Taking Action by Getting Started
One reason it can be helpful to at least get started on the thing we would otherwise procrastinate? Taking action by initiating a task, even if we stop soon after, produces something that has been called the Zeigarnik Effect, identified by a researcher named Bluma Zeigarnik in the 1920s.
Her research showed that people have better memory for tasks they have not yet completed. She demonstrated that once we’ve started something that we haven’t yet finished, the brain wants to get back to it. It’s as though we activate an itch that our brain wants to scratch, by finishing the unfinished task.
There are plenty of ways to at least get started on what needs to be done. When setting goals in therapy, especially with people who are weighed down by significant levels of anxiety or depression, we often work to narrow the scope down. We identify the next, most immediately available, concrete task that the person can actually complete, even when that means breaking bigger tasks down into micro-steps.
Or, it may help to select the simplest and fastest parts of a task you might otherwise procrastinate–things that would take only a minute or two at most to do–and get started by tackling those first.
Sometimes just setting the stage helps. Taking the needed steps or actions to get a thing ready to do is still a form of action. Writing out a list of steps, opening the file on your computer, picking up the clothes from the floor and putting them in the basket, setting out your workout gear and shoes so they’ll be ready to grab later…whatever it looks like.
Basically, when it comes to avoiding the trap of procrastination, any and all actions taken in the direction of the needed task are going to be far more productive than trying to think yourself into feeling like it. And they’re going to prevent that familiar cycle of dread that happens when the stress and anxiety of continued avoidance stack up to an overwhelming degree.
If this is something you’d like more help with, feel free to reach out to us with questions or to ask about our therapy services.
Photo by Eden Constantino on Unsplash
