Personal notes on procrastination

I'm a procrastinator. I've said it. I only perform with deadlines, in firefighting scenarios or scenarios where not doing something has major consequences.

Example scenarios would be:

• people are annoyed because I'm late,
• I get a bad reputation for not delivering,
• the fear of blaming myself in front of an audience.

In reality, it looks like this (happens all the time): I want to learn statistics fundamentals to view and understand data sets. In my head, this totally makes sense. Doing this has so many upsides: I hope to gain more insights by improving my analytic skills. Eventually, I'll make better decisions at work through data-driven approaches. Additionally, I could bring this skill to my blog and sprinkle in some numbers here and there. But even though everything is ready, I have the time and material to read. I still struggle to focus and get it done. Instead, my head drifts towards a completely different topic. Nothing that I would classify with the same importance. But something inside me has this urge to understand this other field better.

To be honest, this sucks. I have a lot of things that make so much sense from a rational decision-maker's perspective, yet they don't get done at all. I have this instant gratification monkey in my head who always finds other things that are so exciting right this moment. Because for this monkey, it's all about instant fun.

When you research how to overcome procrastination, you'll, one way or another, bump into the Eisenhauer Box.

Interlude: The Eisenhauer Box #

What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.
–Dwight Eisenhower

Dwight Eisenhower lived a productive life (as president and five-star general of the United States), which led many people to study his methods around productivity. What's often shared is a simple decision-making tool.

It consists of four boxes where you place your tasks. It gives you an idea of how you should handle them:

• Urgent and important (tasks you will do immediately).
• Important but not urgent (tasks you will schedule to do later).
• Urgent but not important (tasks you will delegate to someone else).
• Neither urgent nor important (tasks that you will eliminate).

You can find additional articles for deeper insights here and here.

Three out of four work for me #

The Eisenhauer box is straightforward and makes a lot of sense. I'm all up for the important and urgent tasks (top left). It includes something like a deadline, which makes it urgent. It is not a problem for me to get it done. So far, so good.

The not important, not urgent section is simple as well. Just scratch it off my schedule. Not a problem. We'll later come back at it because scratching it off my to-do list might not be enough. Sometimes, I have to forget about its existence, that my instant gratification monkey doesn't get back at it. But again, more on that later.

Regarding the not-important but urgent ones: I'm not wealthy, so there is no one I could delegate it to. Therefore, I have to do it myself. And that is okay. However, I'm able to reduce it as much as possible. Overall, this box is not a problem for me as well.

Important but not urgent is the problem #

What gives me a hard time is the important but not urgent box. It is where my long-term goals and even some of my dreams or life goals reside. That means this section is the core which holds real value to me. But I haven't made the progress I would like to see there.

So, how the hell do I get to work on those? As the box above suggests, schedule time for it. Having no family or kids, I'll sure find time for it. But when I have a free day ready for important but not urgent tasks, my instant gratification monkey lights up and goes to work.

I asked myself, how can I "change" myself to be able to work on this box? I'm trying to schedule time, prioritise tasks, lay down a storyline, and make the tasks smaller, but I can't get to work. Over time, I learned to approach it another way.

Work with what you have #

Work with what you have instead of trying to make a different concept work.
–Me.

How about moving tasks from one quadrant to another? Instead of trying to change yourself, accept who you are. Let's use what I already have and make the best of it. This work style might not be pretty, but it gets the job done.

For example, how can I get a life goal from important but not urgent to really freaking urgent? How can I use the things I already know about myself to get to work on an important task by making it urgent? Can I attach an outside deadline or create a constellation that gets me into firefighting? Attaching an important task with urgency will move it into another quadrant, and I will immediately work on it.

For example, sign up for certifications with a time-based license. I have three months to get certified. It makes so much sense to work on it now and get along step by step. I might start with it until I'm bored. Now, my instant gratification monkey has better things to do. Well, I ended up two months later, still at the start of the course. Then, in the last couple of weeks before the deadline, something suddenly strikes me. I look deep into my eyes and ask myself if I still want it. Since completing this course is often on my list, I still want to finish it. But now there is some money on the table. I would waste money if I didn't do it now. Or at least try it now. Otherwise, it would've just been money thrown out of the window. I don't like that. And there is this sudden urge to still get something from the money I invested. But now I have to hurry up. Otherwise, the money is gone. I move my timeline schedule to get it done. And finally, I'm in an important and urgent region. I can go to work.

So every time I book a subscription to learn something (and get certified) that lasts a year, I know that Florian of next year, will have a hard time. Until then, I'll dream about how nice it would be to have this certification, including all the guilt for not getting it.

As mentioned before, use the system you have. It isn't pretty, but it works. If you want to complete your bucket list, a little messiness along the way shouldn't matter. If you think otherwise, I suggest you burn your bucket list and live the happy life you already have. This list just makes you miserable.

Not everything is shiny and clear, though. You might have to try a couple of things. I once told everyone I wanted to get something done. I hoped to create outside pressure to gain urgency. Sadly, it didn't work. So, I kept searching for urgency. Sometime later, I learned that psychology tests showed that announcing your goals makes you less motivated to accomplish them. Damn. Why didn't I find this article sooner?

The takeaway is that each task might involve a different aspect, creating this inner friction and an urge to work on it. It is important to explore and find it.

Tame the monkey to be helpful #

My instant gratification monkey exists and will always be. I asked myself if it would be possible to nudge him in a useful direction. I may have found a way. However, it was way harder than I thought.

We're now coming back to the not important and not urgent section I teased earlier. I noticed that my inner monkey really likes to take things from this section. Placing something in the not important and not urgent section and keeping it in my head will be part of my dark playground. And the monkey loves it there. So what can we do about it?

Instead of placing something that might hurt me in the long run, I try to forget its existence as quickly as possible. That way my instant gratification monkey won't touch it.

Here's an example: I have several fields I would like to learn more about. Some of them are more important than others. Therefore, I place them in different quadrants. I've gotten out of bad habits like wasting time on content consumption. In particular, I have eliminated tools based on addictive scrolling techniques from my life.

What happens is very interesting: The rational decision maker inside me says I should learn a topic. My monkey would rather do something else. The monkey finds something in the not important, not urgent section. But the things the monkey finds still bring me forward. The result: I have learned something else. Not too bad, I would say.

In reality, it looks like this:
Rational decision maker: We should learn more in the field of data science.
Monkey: But I've always wanted to understand electrical circuits.
End result: I learned another technical concept. Not bad, I would say.

Again, it isn't pretty, but it turned out to be okay-ish. Or it could be worse.

Only placing relevant things that push me forward anywhere in my prioritisation box brings me forward. My monkey will start to play and switch up the prioritisation. But in any way, it brings me forward.

By the way #

This blog post is a result of my instant gratification monkey. Instead of focusing on a really important but not urgent topic, my monkey rather did something else (writing this post). But after the day, having another blog post ready is not a bad result, I guess.

Additional Resources #

Tim Urban explored procrastination from his perspective a decade ago. In his TED talk, he introduced a wording (rational decision maker, instant gratification, etc.) that I've used in this post as well. On top of that, he has a very entertaining article about his full story creating the TED talk.