I’ve no idea how it’s happened but my Facebook newsfeed is progressively full of inspirational memes and videos. These are normally American in origin and urge me to ‘believe in myself’ and ‘face challenges straight on’ or ‘overcome ANY adversity’. You know the type of thing. I’ve had one rant about this before in this blog and I’m sure you won’t put up with a second one, but…..once again I found another vid infesting my screen today – this one with some aging American marine urging me to make my bed in the morning….
Against my better judgement I had a look at this latest unwelcome guest, and knock me down with a feather, I found it had a shred of wisdom that’s stuck with me J. You see the concept (slightly drowned out by dramatic music, naturally) is that if you get up and make your bed straight away then no matter how bad your day gets, you’ll know that at least you have a made and comfortable bed at the end of it. That little action (and it’s amazing how many people don’t do it) sets you up with a constructive mind set for the day ahead.
OK, I know what you’re thinking: ‘the bloke’s lost it. He should be working as a copywriter for Clinton’s Cards.’ But bear with me on this…
One of our focuses at Optimus Learning is helping our clients streamline and future-proof their businesses, and one of the best methods of doing that is to help employees do the same in their working lives. How can we make our businesses work better? And how can we make our lives better and more productive as individuals?
Well, how many times have you diligently made a list of 10 or so chores or tasks, only to become frustrated when they remain unfinished at the end of play? Perhaps procrastination is more of a problem than we’ve previously considered?
If it is it’s certainly not a new one.
Even Hesiod (Greek bloke, poet) cautioned not to “put your work off till tomorrow and the day after” and that was about 800BC. According to Eric Jaffe, writing for the Association of Psychological science : ‘procrastination isn’t just hateful, it’s downright harmful. In research settings, people who procrastinate have higher levels of stress and lower well being. In the real world, undesired delay is often associated with inadequate retirement savings and missed medical visits.’
But, don’t we all procrastinate? Well to a lesser and greater degree, yes – however Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University (who has completed extensive work on the subject) writes: ‘while everybody may procrastinate, not everyone is a procrastinator,” His work has found that as many as 20% of people may be chronic procrastinators and in that case: ‘to tell the chronic procrastinator to just do it would be like saying to a clinically depressed person, cheer up.”
But what about the other 80%? Well, research and advice in overcoming procrastination is extensive, but to précis – while a chronic procrastinator will create a list, do a couple of the simplest chores thereon, re-write the list, shuffle it about, get stressed and re-write it again, a ‘delayer’ demands more discipline and structure: “…the basic notion of procrastination as self-regulation failure is pretty clear,” says Timothy Pychyl of Carleton University, in Canada. “You know what you ought to do and you’re not able to bring yourself to do it. It’s that gap between intention and action.”
So without going into too much more detail (and boring all rather than most of you reading), what can we do about it? Some hints (from the experts, not me):
- Chop up tasks – smaller chores that lead to a positive result can be motivational and easier to cope with
- Personalise deadlines – personal responsibility, especially in the workplace, often holds more authority to the individual
- Set rewards – allow yourself a coffee, break, cigarette on the completion of a task
- Target the most demanding chore first – especially at the beginning of the day when the mind tends to be clearer and more focussed
- Pay it forward – When you finish one task and think about a break, do one more thing before you quit. Start another and you’ll be ahead when you start again
Oh, and make your bed…..
– Blake
You can contact Blake via blake.henegan@optimuslearningservices.com or call 0845 519 7408
