You will never find time for anything. You must make it.
– Charles Buxton

Yes, it’s a new year coming up! A time for positive changes! And among the New Year’s resolutions that will be made, one of the most common ones will involve procrastination. Have you promised yourself anything like this? That you will not fall behind on important tasks, not put things off till the last possible moment? I’m not making fun of you. Telling ourselves that we want to do better is an important first step – it means we recognize that procrastination has caused stress and anxiety for us in the past, and that we don’t want that kind of stress anymore. But how do we change a habit as ingrained as procrastination?

We’ve all heard the standard advice: “just do it,” “make a plan,” “be more organized” or “learn to manage your time better” – and if such advice really worked, procrastination wouldn’t be as common as it is. Worse, such advice makes procrastination sound like something easy to solve. So, if you still procrastinate, you get to feel like a failure as well; you can start labeling yourself as “lazy,” “disorganized,” or “a hopeless procrastinator.” Well, here’s some good news. Procrastination is not caused by laziness, and is not cured by better time management techniques or organizational skills. People with a tendency to procrastinate (and that’s all of us!) usually don’t procrastinate on everything – only on tasks that they find overwhelming, boring, or both. If something is interesting or personally important, most of us find the time and the motivation to work long and hard on that task. So it is first of all a “task” problem, not a “person” problem.

This is not to say that we can’t have an effect on such behavior, because we all have to do things that don’t interest us sometimes. The biggest thing we can do is to watch what we say to ourselves to justify putting things off just a little longer. When we start to recognize these “cognitive distortions” and learn to “talk back” to those excuses, we are more likely to get started. Here are some examples of common cognitive distortions, and ways of dealing with them. See if you recognize any of these.

• I have plenty of time left to get this done – it’s not due till next week. –You know what this leads to! You’ll put this off until the last minute, and will concentrate then on just getting it done instead of doing a good job. Here’s an idea: make a deal with yourself to do only a small part of the task right now, even if it’s only making a list of all the steps involved to finish the task. Then get yourself to start doing the first item on the list, as a jumpstart.

• This won’t take long, I can do it later. Experience has shown over and over that the actual time necessary to complete any project is about 3-5 times as much as people think it will be! Be honest with yourself and say, “I think it will take a half hour, so I probably need to plan on at least 2 hours to get it done.”

• I really don’t feel like it right now. I’ll do it later when I have more motivation. Here’s an excuse that can be used over and over again, and which is based on a faulty understanding of motivation. Motivation doesn’t “just happen” – it comes from doing things! Try the five-minute plan: Agree to work on something for just five minutes. At the end of five minutes, decide whether you want to keep working, or switch to something else. Chances are, once you get started, you’ll feel more motivated to finish.

• I’m not really in the mood right now so I won’t be able to do a good job. I may as well do it later. This is just plain wrong! Studies have found that there is no noticeable difference in the quality of projects that were completed by people in a good mood versus a negative mood. You have done plenty of things in the past when you weren’t in the mood, and they probably turned out fine.

• It will take me two hours (or longer) to get this done, and I don’t have two hours right now, so there is no point in getting started. With people’s busy schedules, there is hardly ever the right amount of time available to finish larger projects. Plan accordingly, and break down the task into smaller steps, then complete one step at a time. You’re always better off getting something done rather than nothing.

Remember that the easiest person for you to fool is yourself. You probably wouldn’t accept these kinds of excuses from someone else, so don’t accept them from yourself! Ouch! This is difficult, isn’t it? This year, when you find yourself trying to justify that it’s okay to put things off until a “better time,” remind yourself that there is no such thing! If something needs to be done, cut the excuses and DO IT NOW!