Why Prioritisation Beats Procrastination Every Time

/
 

Prioritisation Beats Procrastination

- Ch: 4.4 of How To Get Your Sh!t Together -

“The key is not to prioritise what is on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” – Stephen Covey

Procrastination kills dreams.

It causes the ‘must do’ tasks to build up and never get done. It takes away our leisure time. It makes us stressed and causes us to scramble over approaching deadlines. It makes us feel guilty and worthless whenever we recognise all of the things we haven’t yet completed.

Where did that time go? It was simply wasted.

We know we could do more, be more, if only we didn’t procrastinate so much. Yet even if we recognise this fact, even if we look procrastination square in the eyes and say ‘No, not this time. This time I will work efficiently, this time I will achieve everything I set out to achieve’, procrastination still wins. The day ends and we look at our accomplishments and are disappointed once more at our apparent inability to overcome the inertia of inaction. Repeat.

The key to overcoming procrastination involves honing the skills of prioritisation and then taking action.

If you know what you need to do, why you need to do it, how to do it, and the order that you will do it in, the only thing left is to take action.

Why You Procrastinate

Stop Avoiding Things

There is a real temptation to be lazy and undisciplined. We know that we have to get stuff done, but we put it off in favor of something more fun. The television calls to us to sit down, snuggle up and enjoy ‘just one more episode’. Friends and family always want more of our time than we can realistically give them.

Our hobbies, games and adventures are far more entertaining than the drudgery of our commitments. Social media is always there, demanding our attention, literally designed to be as addictive as possible. It takes real effort to allocate time to unpleasant, boring and difficult work – so we simply don’t. This approach clearly results in nothing much getting done. An unfortunate reality of life is that sometimes we simply have to go through the motions and work.

 “Eat shit for 24 months and eat caviar for the rest of your life.” – Gary Vaynerchuck 

Sounds terrible I know. Some things can’t be avoided, but others can - through effective prioritisation. If you eliminate all but the most important tasks, you can focus all of your effort onto them. True, you may still have to ‘eat shit’, but at least you know you are doing it for a reason.

You Have Too Many Tasks

It is important to take action the moment a task arises. In this way, you can avoid being overwhelmed by an ever increasing ‘to do’ list.

‘To do’ lists do work, and they are a great starting point for anyone who wants to start getting organised. Making one is simple, just grab a piece of paper and write ‘to do’ across the top, and then list below everything that you need to accomplish. When an item is completed, cross it off, and if another item arises, add it to the list.

To Do:
- Call brother to wish him a happy birthday for yesterday
- Walk the dog
- Write the work report that is due tomorrow
- Pay phone bill
- Re-varnish outdoor decking
- Backup computer
- Practice guitar
- Watch daughter’s dance recital tonight
- Check car oil (the ‘check engine light’ is on)
- Go to the gym
- Go grocery shopping

The problem with only using a simple ‘to do’ list like the one above, is that the list quickly becomes massive and lacks direction. Very quickly there will be so many things listed that it would take weeks to complete all of the tasks, not accounting for work, family and social commitments or the new items that will inevitably get added.

A long ‘to do’ list causes procrastination.

The more items on the list, the more overwhelming it becomes. When you finally allocate some time to completing a task on the list, you review the entire list and then begin to ruminate over how long the list is, all the tasks need to get done, and which task that you should complete first. You spend so long deciding what to do and the process of this decision is so stressful, that you struggle to make a choice and subsequently don’t.

Prioritise Then Execute

For those that do manage to choose a task to complete, the task chosen is often not the most important task, but rather the easiest or quickest task to complete. This choice is justified by the belief that ‘It is on my to do list so I clearly need to get it done. It is as good a place as any to start.'

A typical ‘to do’ list doesn’t give any consideration to the relative importance of each item. So it is easy to complete any task on the list and feel like you are making progress. Doing something is of course better than nothing, but doing something that isn’t important is almost always a waste of time.

In his book ‘The Four Hour Work Week’, Tim Ferris suggests that you should ‘find the lead domino’. By this he is suggesting that you should determine which of your many tasks, which if completed, would move your position the most. Basically he is saying find out what is the most important task and start there.

This isn’t as easy as it may seem at first. Take a look at that ‘to do’ list again and tell me which task should be completed first.

To Do:
- Call brother to wish him a happy birthday for yesterday
- Walk the dog
- Write the work report that is due tomorrow
- Pay phone bill
- Re-varnish outdoor decking
- Backup computer
- Practice guitar
- Watch daughter’s dance recital tonight
- Check car oil (the ‘check engine light’ is on)
- Go to the gym
- Go grocery shopping

Life is complicated and clearly there is no correct answer. It all depends on what you value, what your goals are, and your current mental state.

For example: If you have a goal of becoming a famous guitar player, practice may take preference over everything else. If you value family more than anything, then calling your brother and watching your daughter’s recital will be top of the list. If you are feeling depressed and the only solution is to go to the gym, then that should be completed first. If you place a high value on your career, than you may need to pull an all nighter working on the report. If you are feeling increasingly anxious about safety, enough that you are having a panic attack at the thought of driving, then you need to take a look under the hood.

I am not here to judge you or what you value. I want to help you to do you in whatever form that takes. If you know yourself, know what is important to you, and know what you need to get done, you will have a much easier time choosing which tasks you need to complete.

You Don’t Know Your ‘Why’

If you don’t know why you have to do something, it is hard to be motivated to do it.

As a school teacher, I realised that one of the most important roles in my position involves convincing students of why they should do their work. School involves a lot of seemingly pointless tasks that are given to students under the threat of ‘it will be on the test’.

This leads to the students questioning the importance of the test, to which they are told that, ‘tests determine grades, and grades will determine access to higher education’. At first glance this explanation sounds reasonable, but there are many holes that students are all too apt to pry open and exploit. Trust me on this.

For a start, any student who is not interested in, or feels like they are not capable of, higher education immediately disregards the lesson, and subsequently procrastinates. According to the explanation provided to them, they have no real reason to continue to try. Students who don’t like the subject, the ones who plan on dropping it as soon as possible, also switch off. They feel like they won’t use it in their future, so they stop working. This pattern happens time and time again.

There are two solutions to this problem. One involves the student enrolling into the subjects that best meets their individual needs, aptitudes and likes. The second involves their teachers adequately explaining the ‘why’ of the work they are providing to the student. This why will have to be personalised for each student of course and is not always easy. But any self-respecting teacher should strive to show their students why what they are teaching them is in fact important to their students, because if it is only important for the test, is it really that important?

I guarantee that you completed more of the work that you found interesting and important compared to the work that ‘you had to complete because it was on the test’.

In regards to completing tasks, real life is not like school at all. There is no teacher to set tasks, or to convince you of ‘why’ you should do them. It is on you. So if you find yourself procrastinating over getting something done, ask yourself why? Why is this task important to me to complete? If I get it done, how will that help me towards my goals? Why am I going through all of this effort when I could be doing something much more exciting with my time?

How To Prioritise

In order to prioritise you must first know what your overall goals are.

Once you know what you want to accomplish, you can determine what best will get you there.

This book will help you with this process, but in particular chapters 1.9 ‘Meditate’, 2.2 ‘Notice Your Warning Signs And Take Action’, 5.2 ‘Live By Your Values’, and 6.3, ‘Set Goals’ are a good place to start.

For some people, this is enough. Once they have a clear understanding of who they are and where they want to go, it can be quite easy to simply see which tasks need to be performed first. Once they know the ‘why’, they are inherently motivated to take the action needed to get it done. For others, further guidance is required.

One approach is to use the ‘to do’ list as a kind of master list containing everything that needs to be done, and then using that list to write up a ‘Daily To Do’ list the night before. I find that by prioritising what I want to accomplish the next day I am able to be at least 200% more productive than I would otherwise be.

I must stress the importance of prioritising the day before.

When I wake up I don’t need to think about what I need to do. It is already there waiting for me. Because I don’t need to look at my ‘Master To Do’ list, I don’t get overwhelmed by everything that I will eventually have to complete. I just see what I need to do for that day.

Deciding the previous night means that any anxiety that choosing caused me has gone over the night and in the morning I can just get to work. There is always a temptation to go ‘off script’ to look into tangential tasks and other distractions, but whenever I give into temptation I always regret the wasted opportunity to work. To avoid this procrastination trap I make sure to have a note pad handy that I can use to simply jot down any ideas, issues or new tasks that pop up. At the end of the day I can add these tasks to the ‘Master To Do’ list, and then plan the next day’s work.

This approach works well because I don’t need to think about what needs to be done. I trust that I have already made the right choice last night. Now I just do what needs to be done, in the order that I have previously stipulated. If a task takes longer than expected and I subsequently don’t get through the entire list of that day, I can simply move it to the top of the next days ‘To Do’ list.

If I find that I am not sure which the most important task is, I typically employ ‘Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Principle’ to guide my decision making. The formal approach to using this principle involves allocating tasks based on their level of importance and there level of urgency.

Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Principle

Complete the tasks in the following order:

First: Important and Urgent tasks
Second: Important but not Urgent
Third: Not Important but Urgent
Fourth: Not Important and not Urgent

If you allocate all the tasks that you need to perform into these categories and perform them in that order, you are guaranteeing that the most important tasks will get completed when they need to be completed.

This approach has saved me countless hours of wasted time, or more specifically, re-allocated countless hours away from non-important, non-urgent tasks and put them into the things that really matter. Until I went through this approach, I wasn’t aware of how poorly I was using my time.

Take a minute to think over your last week of work (both professionally and at home), how much of your time was spent performing tasks that are at the bottom of Eisenhower’s list?

TAKE ACTION

1) Make a ‘Master To Do’ list: Get a piece of paper or using a phone app, list down everything that you need to complete. Take all the time you need to make sure that this is a comprehensive list.

2) Allocate: Using the Eisenhower principle above, write ‘First’, ‘Second’, ‘Third’, and ‘Fourth’ next to each task.

3) Write a ‘To Do’ list for today: On that list only place items that have ‘First’ written beside it. Be realistic as to how many items to place on the list, based on how much time you can dedicate towards completing the tasks today. If an item is too large to be completed in one session, break it down into its component parts and place some of them on the list.

4) TAKE ACTION: Start working on the first item on your ‘to do’ list. Continue until you run out of time.

5) Repeat: Tonight, make a ‘to do’ list for tomorrow. Every time you complete a task, cross it off your ‘Master To Do’ list. If a new task arises, add it to the ‘Master To Do’ list and allocate it according to the Eisenhower principle.

 “Prioritise and execute”
– Jocko Willink

Anti-Procrastination Tips

Other than effective prioritisation, there are some general tips that I have found to help me to overcome procrastination.

Eliminate Distractions

Turn off the phone, work in a designated space with the door closed and let people know that you are busy. It is so tempting to let distractions in. It takes effort to avoid the temptation of social media or talking with your family.

Set yourself up for success and eliminate as many distractions as possible, that way you avoid the issue before it arises.

Social media is procrastination trap. Every time a notification draws you back to your phone, you not only lose time, but more importantly you lose focus. It can take a long time to get into the zone, and every time you look at social, you are splitting your focus and interrupting your flow. By the time you get back into it, you probably will have another notification drawing you back to social. Repeat this process and hours can be easily wasted.

When I sit down to write, I take the following actions to eliminate as many distractions as possible.

Phone off – Yes it can be turned on, but that takes a lot longer than just clicking onto social.

Family notified that I am working – They know that I am writing and unless it is an emergency, I am not to be disturbed for the next three hours.

Door closed – I work in a room with a closed door. This eliminates the possibility of tempting passing conversations, and interruptions from my toddler barging into the room.

Headphones on with music – This takes away any external noise and replaces it with music. I choose piano music by Ludovico Einaudi. It is pleasant and doesn’t have distracting lyrics to take my mind away from my work. Noise cancelling ear buds work as well.

Lock the dogs inside – My dogs occasionally bark outside my window and can cause a level of frustration. So while I am writing, they are kept inside to avoid any issues before they arise.

Eat/drink prior – It takes time to eat and drink. I don’t want to be distracted when I am in the zone by hunger or thirst, so I make sure to eat prior to beginning.

Set Realistic Expectations

Things often take longer than expected. If I set unrealistic expectations of what I can accomplish, I can become overwhelmed with ‘having to do too much’. This causes inaction as I begin to fret about everything that I need to get done, subsequently setting off a chain of negative self-talk.

Do What You Love

If I myself hating what I am doing I take that as a sign to potentially change course. Oftentimes I realise that completing that task won’t really take me to where I am wanting to go anyway.

Break Tasks Down Into Manageable chunks

Of course, there will inevitably be things that are boring but have to be done. If this is the case, I will break them up into small parts, for example completing thirty minute blocks of tedium in-between more enjoyable activities.

I love writing, but find the process of uploading it to my website to be quite boring, yet it has to be done. So I will write for a while, upload some stuff, do some exercise, then write some more. That way I get it done, but I am not hating the process.

Don’t Let Small Tasks Build Up

If you get a small task that can be easily addressed, do it straight away. This will help you to ensure the collection of small tasks that you need to get done, doesn’t become a large problem that causes you stress and takes hours of your time to complete when you do finally decide to address it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q) I have used the ‘Eisenhower’ principle, but I am never finding the time to complete the tasks labelled ‘Third’ and ‘Fourth’. What should I do?

A) Great! That means that you are allocating all the time you have onto the tasks that actually matter.

‘Third’ and ‘Fourth’ tasks are not important, so if you never do them it really doesn’t matter. The truth is that you might never complete those tasks. They could stay on your ‘Master To Do’ list for years.

This has happened to me. At first I got nervous about it, and felt a weird sense of guilt. But I eventually realised that as time progressed, my life wasn’t detrimentally impacted by not completing those tasks. Other than clogging up space on my ‘Master To Do’ list, nothing bad happened. Take solace that you are focusing on what actually matters in your life.

Q) I feel completely overwhelmed by everything that I need to accomplish. ‘To do’ lists and other forms of organisational tools just make it worse!

A) I would suggest that you need to get yourself some support.

Firstly I would recommend enlisting the assistance of a friend, relative, or co-worker to help alleviate some of the burden. Take the time to explain to the predicament that you have found yourself in and how they could help you. Be sure to let them know exactly what you need of them and why. Remember to return the favor if your situations reverse.

Secondly, I would strongly suggest that you enlist the services of a psychologist, therapist or coach. This is somebody that can help you to handle some of the symptoms associated with such a busy schedule, or with the general stressors of life. If you find a good therapist, the benefits to your mental state will more than compensate for the time and money spent in therapy. You will be able to approach tasks with a clearer mind, and have strategies to cope with stress.

Finally, I would suggest taking some time to meditate and exercise daily. I know that this seems counterintuitive, as these activities take up time. But as I have described in chapter 1.9 ‘Meditate’ and chapter 2.4 ‘Exercise Daily’, the benefits to your mental state are well worth it.

Q) My boss gives me a lot of tasks that the ‘Eisenhower’ principle would suggest are ‘Third’ and ‘Fourth’ level. They are not important, and often not urgent – yet for some reason my boss cares if they are done. How can I focus on what really matters?

A) Open and honest communication.
Firstly it is important to realise that your boss has different priorities to you and will look at the workplace from a different perspective. If you are not sure why you are given a task make sure to ask why it is to be performed, perhaps you will learn something!

If you are still not convinced, perhaps suggest to your boss why you think that they (or the business) would benefit from you focusing on what you think should be a priority. You may be able to improve the workplace in a way that surprises your boss!

Resources

The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, Jocko Willink
The Four Hour Work Week, Tim Ferris
Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important principle, Mind Tools
Elements (music album), Ludovico Einaudi

Summary

Know ‘why’ you are performing each task. Prioritise what is important, eliminate distractions and take action.