I am a classic procrastinator, I have been procrastinating for years and know all too well how it impacts your professional career and the long term impact on your professional progression and promotion. What you may not know is that career delay due to procrastination is surprisingly common.
If this is left unchecked then it will have a huge impact on your professional life.
If you have a tendency (for no valid reason) to delay, not complete or not even start an important career goal and instead choose to do something unimportant, despite the longer-term negative consequences and repercussions then you are procrastinating in this important area.
It is a mistake to think of procrastination as a time management problem, organising your calendar, creating to do lists can all help the symptom but unfortunately, they do not address the root cause of the procrastination and it’s your career that suffers.
Procrastination is an emotional management problem, it is effectively stress relief allowing us to deal with unpleasant negative emotions, imagine it as a sticking plaster to make us feel better in that moment pushing the problem further into the future.
You may by nature not be a procrastinator and find yourself surprised that you are procrastinating now, this can happen when something or unexpected happens which puts you outside your comfort zone.
There can be many reasons for this negative emotional state when it comes to managing your next career step, I have listed a few below for guidance, however, your reason may be unique to you.
At a general level you may:
- Be unhappy or unfulfilled in your present position
- Feel unfairly treated or feel you are not respected in your role
- Have issues in your personal life which are draining your emotional energy
Or the emotional state may be tied to how you feel about the next career step:
- You are afraid you might fail in this role
- You know it will be challenge and this is making you uncomfortable
- Your head is full of ‘what if’ questions
- You are afraid of rejection in the application progress
- You don’t know how or where to start
- Your goals are too vague
- You are uncertain of what you want to do
When you start to think your career step you get anxious and begin to experience some negative emotions which you would rather avoid, so you do something (anything) that makes you feel better right now leaving the consequences for later. The bigger the change or the challenge the greater the emotional impact, the greater the need to procrastinate.
So why does this matter?
Well your next career step won’t happen by accident, and because you know you are actively avoiding it, you now feel even worse, so what you need now is an even bigger and better feel good distraction to deal with this even stronger negative emotional state. Eventually you may get to the point where you don’t want to even talk about it as this only brings back all the uncomfortable emotions.
Signs and impacts of career procrastination
Watch out for any of the following red flags:
- You are putting up with a situation at work
- You struggle to get things started and continually promise to start tomorrow/soon
- You spend too long gathering information, facts and options
- You want to wait and see what happens in your present role before acting
- You become anxious or embarrassed when asked how the plan is going
- You feel demotivated due to a lack of progress
- You are always planning the next strategic move with no action taken
This is much darker and more harmful aspect to procrastination, most procrastinators are nudged due to the workplace deadlines and accountability, however, your career plans don’t have deadlines or accountability, no one is pushing you or holding you accountable. When dreams or desires go unrealised or unfulfilled because of a lack of progress which is directly tied to a lack of activity, then you are a passive observer of your dreams and of your life. This is the true and brutal cost of procrastination.
What actions can you take?
It doesn’t have to be like this, there are steps you can take to deal with this emotional monster.
1. Deal quickly with the emotion:
Acknowledge the negative feelings you are experiencing in that moment, you are unlikely to be able to deal with whatever is going on but you can make the effort to move your mind out of this state. Spend a few minutes focusing all of your attention on something else.
- A picture
- A sound
- A physical feeling
- Whatever works for you
You only do this for a few minutes (it mustn’t become your new distraction)
Once you are no longer focussing on the negative emotion do 1 thing to get started (anything). Once you start on a task you are 80% more likely to continue.
2. Forgive yourself:
Stressing about what you haven’t done just creates more guilt and negative emotions which adds to the problem. Research shows that students who didn’t study for the exams but were compassionate and forgave themselves were more likely to study next time than those who hung onto the guilt.
3. Change your reward behaviour:
Remember that procrastination is a habit, and nice pleasant distractions feeds this habit. Rather than submitting to the immediate reward, promise yourself you can do it AFTER you have
- Completed the work
- Done the 1st page
- Done the hard bit
Get into the habit of rewarding the good behaviours and not the bad behaviours, you will enjoy the reward more this way.
4. Drop the perfectionism:
This doesn’t impact everyone, however, if you are a perfectionist then the need for perfection causes anxiety and stress and this leads us full circle back to procrastination. Practise dealing with this emotion to let you get started. You can make it perfect later, for now the focus needs to be getting started.
5. Create some accountability:
Deadlines are a great way to create focus so creating smaller goals where you are accountable to someone can help, however, be careful this creates the right environment and not more stress. An ideal accountability partner should be non-judgemental but is happy to challenge you whenever you are not be honest about why you have not made any progress.
6. Remove the Distractions:
Removing anything that can distract you. Phones are terrible distractions especially of you get notified every time something trivial happens on any social media channel. Put the phone away, perhaps it can be your reward? You can check your phone for updates after you have completed the work.
- Done the 1st page
- Done the hard bit
7. Set concrete goals:
Abstract and poorly defined goals are difficult to achieve as they lack a concrete definition of success, this makes starting difficult as you unsure of what you wish to achieve.
Change is rarely immediate; we all need to work at changing an embedded habit such as procrastination. If you don’t deal with this habit then your own career will suffer as a consequence.
Email Tamsin at TSQCoaching@gmail.com Or DM him here.
