I Am a Procrastinator

I admit it. I am not a procrastiworker. I am not a high-functioning procrastinator. I can be a perfectionist, but I won’t let that count as an excuse for today’s topic: That I am a procrastinator! Nothing fancy, no sugarcoating, that’s the word.

(Damn, it feels good to type that out loud.)

In my book that means that I handle important, urgent tasks poorly and defer them to the degree that I impede the people around me. It doesn’t happen often but the two occasions it has happened are reason enough for me to work on myself and minimize the risk of it happening again.

You see, since I have gone solo-freelancer my commitments to people and the quality of my work have become very intimate, almost sacred measures. What I commit to do and when I deliver on that promise is the result of careful research and empathetic negotiation and I sure as hell do not want to disappoint. I feel a new level of pride in my work, but also a new level of pressure. The layer between my work and its immediate consequences has become thinner and being a procrastinator has led to disappointment.

My usual methods of weaseling out of procrastination-induced situations—pulling an all-nighter, fakin’ it until makin’ it, finding ungodly amounts of motivation and perseverance in the face of ridicule and failure—are not failsafe anymore. Because I am solo, the excuse of doing something “for the team” is gone. There is also no manager to impress, no glory to be earned from doing the unimaginable on such last minute. Bravo, me. No, it is just me and the fact that I failed. And maybe I deserve questioning and punishment.

My next stage of responding to the situation is a self-imposed downward spiral of self-doubt, regret, and a deep, consuming sadness. Because what kind of person am I, if I fail my vocation?! Those lows are no comparison to the highs of finishing something last minute. I am very okay with trading that adrenaline rush with mental stability and peace. Doing stuff last minute and—oh, the hubris—decking myself out with my achievements seems childish now.

I am ready to change my modus operandi.

Before I formulate my research questions, I would like to collect the bits of self knowlegde that are topic-adjacent:

• I am a scanner personality, i.e. I enjoy fresh starts and I struggle with finishing things.
• I am a fast thinker.
• I can compensate for late starts with power of concentration, creative problem solving, and deep thinking.
• I took pride in my ability of delivering very good results on short notice. Lately, I enjoy the calm of having things done in advance of a deadline.
• I do not struggle with the usual suspects of procrastination: taxes, household chores, anything related with my friends and family. My procrastination is most dominant in the realm of wage labor.
• I do not shy away from project management: I do my due diligence, document everything, try to de-risk unknowns, and slice larger issues into manageable pieces.
• I have a hunch that my level of procrastination is inversely proportional to the amount of creativity/lack of self-efficacy involved in a task.

That leads me to the following research questions:

1. How can I define and identify those situations that I face with paralyzing procrastination?
2. What can I do to meet these situations with professional indifference and. Do. The. Work?

I will tackle these questions by working through the podcast Prokrastination — Der Podcast für Aufschieber by systemic coach Malte Leyhausen. You heard it right! No clever self-help book, no productivity guru/100x software developer on YouTube, no! This quest demands a coach whispering sweet, sweet wisdom into my ears.

OK, OK, this is all a bit the wrong way around. The truth is that I took a walk in the woods and searched for “procrastination” in my podcatcher. All of the above is the result of listening to the first episode that only spans 15 minutes.

I’m on to something!

Episode 1: Definition and Causes for Procrastination

What immediately stands out to me is Malte’s unagitated approach to the topic; it is pretty early in the episode that he outlines his general belief regarding procrastination: Being a procrastinator does not mean something is wrong with me that needs fixing. It means that I function in a certain way and I need to understand that way better. Procrastination is neither a bad thing, nor a good thing.

It’s just a thing.

And I need to write my own manual for that thing. Sounds a lot more achievable than changing my whole personality. Because I can tell you … I quite like some of the bullet points above. Phew! I like what I’m hearing so far.

Instead of obscuring what defines me as a person, I rather need to answer questions like: When it comes to my work routine, what can I omit? What do I need to add? What disturbances do I need to eliminate? How can I create an atmosphere that lets me feel good and be productive?

Malte promises to revisit these questions in future episodes. For now he goes through some of the latest research in the field:

• Willpower can be negotiated with and thereby trained.
• Treat high levels of resistance against a task as a freebie (early?) warning system that indicates that something has gone sideways earlier, e.g. gross misjudgement of scope, bad planning.
  • Uhhhhhhhhh! That does ring a bell and might be a first clue for my first research question.
  • These sound like the kind of situations I need to pay close attention to and learn from.
• Specific tasks can act like kryptonite and take us a lot of effort. What is the lever to grin and bear it?
  • I appreciate that Malte helps debunking the myth of not having a choice: He always leaves “I will ignore the task, do nothing, and walk away.” on the table as an option. He does add potentially unbearable consequences for consideration, but presents it as an option nonetheless.
• Deadlines that are far away = no deadlines at all. Shorter sprints work a lot better with humans.
  • Spoiler: That explains why the Pomodoro timer works exceptionally well for me to get over the first hump of work.

Episode 2: Defining Goals Successfully

I can imagine that if you have read this far, you are familiar with the SMART framework for goals of high quality. I will walk through the letters of this overused acronym once more and weave in my personal experiences and aspirations.

S

Specific. Being as specific as possible and thereby reducing the guesswork to a minimum is key. Both for client and personal projects. Document those specifics (that include deadline and measurable outcome, also two letters of SMART) and have all involved parties of the goal agree to them. It is okay if specifics are added later, after necessary research or experiments. A solid note-taking/documentation system is indispensable. Be relentless in making a goal specific. Guessing almost never leads to satisfying results.

M

Measurable. Really good metrics that can measure success are precious, but also very rare. I aim to produce artifacts that stand for themselves as proof of work and knowledge. To support this, I try to think in projects—almost every SMART goal is either a project or a subtask of a project in my pesonal PARA model—rather than areas.

A

Agreed, attainable, achievable. (The podcast calls this anspruchsvoll and attraktiv—the right level of ambitious and attractive.) For me, this is a given if the goal is creative, sparks self-efficacy, or presents an opportunity for self-improvement. That’s what gives me motivation. But let’s be realistic (spoiler: R stands for realistic): Goals do not always have those qualities and then I struggle with procrastination the most. I will put more effort into identifying areas of learning and growth in the most mundane tasks.

R

Realistic. This is the area where I have to improve the most. A realistic goal demands careful assessment of time, capacities, and risk. I vow to do better.

T

Timely. Every goal (project, subtask) should have a deadline. Period. A deadline is also a great measure of success if nothing else presents itself. And it is also the most simple indicator of failure. If I can be more more realistic about goals that are not super attractive to me, I think I can tackle procrastination better and become successful.

I have two gripes with SMART goals:

1. The acronym suggests that all letters are of equal weight when they are really not. For example, T can be part of M, and both contribute to S.
2. They are not in the correct order. I would think about A and R first, before going into any of the S work. Malte adds for consideration that goals should be aligned with personal beliefs, values, aspirations, and emotions. I believe that careful dealings with A and R can go a long way to achieve that.

I only struggle with procrastination around personal projects when the alignment with my values and emotions is skewed. That misalignment usually stems from my inherent awkwardness regarding privilege and an almost stubborn attitude towards non-urgent tasks or tasks that only improve quality of life. I struggle with professional projects when I rushed A and R.

This exercise also showed me why it is so hard to formulate habit changes as goals. There is no deadline! A habit change should last till the day I die, so I am never really done with proving that I changed a habit or built a new one. It is clear to me now that habit changes have to go hand in hand with SMART subgoals.

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