Stop Procrastinating for Good!

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TweetWe both know you should be working, not reading this article. But you’re still here. Still reading. Why? Procrastination.
Roughly 20 percent of people are chronic procrastinators, meaning they’re constantly putting things off at work, at home, in their relationships, and in every other facet of daily life, explains Joseph Ferrari, Ph.D., a psychologist at DePaul University.
Procrastination is the triumph of short-term mood repair over long-term goal completion, says Timothy Pychyl, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Carleton University in Ontario. The part of your brain that controls emotion (and thrives on instant gratification) is older and often stronger than the part that understands what’s best for you in the long run, Pychyl explains.

There are many explanations and justifications for our collective I’ll-take-care-of-that-later mentality, discussed in depth in a recent New York Times report. But Ferrari argues most of those excuses are just that—excuses. “People have always and will always find reasons to procrastinate,” he says. Here’s how to stop.

Make your enemy a friend. Posting your goals in a public place like Facebook might seem counterintuitive, but social media can act as a great motivator, Ferrari says. “If you say on Twitter that you have three things you need to do this morning, studies show you’re a lot more likely to do them. People hold you accountable, and you hold yourself more accountable.”

Worry about starting, not finishing. “Once we get started, our perception of a task changes,” says Pychyl. Something that may have seemed too tedious or unpleasant before may not seem so bad once you’ve gone to work on it. “Even if it’s a small start, you’ll be more likely to continue it,” Ferrari adds. Pychyl recommends setting very modest, very specific goals. For example: Schedule time to clean out your email between 3 p.m. and 3:15 this afternoon. Chances are good that 4:30 will find you finishing up the chore you’d been putting off for weeks.

Eliminate distractions. OK, you have the willpower of a 2-year-old. Accept it and take steps to mitigate your attention span’s greatest enemies: Your computer and your cell phone. The Internet-blocking app Freedom ($10, macfreedom.com) will prevent you from surfing away your productivity. If you’re the type that needs to turn everything into a game, download the Study Buddy app ($0.99 for iPhone—one of our 10 best apps for college students), and your phone will mock your weakness with a graph of all the times you stopped working to send a text or play Angry Birds. It’ll also tell you to get the hell back to work.

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