5 Ways to End Procrastination

Are you avoiding certain tasks in your life? Do you dread the thought of trying to get them done?

Author and productivity expert Oliver Burkeman believes that you may be using up more energy worrying about and avoiding these tasks than performing them: “It can be alarming to realize just how much of life gets shaped by what we’re actively trying to avoid. We talk about ‘not getting around to things’ as if it were merely a failure of organization, or of will. But often the truth is that we invest plenty of energy in making sure we never get around to them.”

Maybe you’re putting off a project because you don’t know where to begin. Or perhaps you are hesitating to take a job because you’re afraid of failure. You may be unwilling to face a task that you can’t do perfectly. Whatever the reason, procrastination offers relief in the moment but increases your long term stress.

Here are five ways Oliver Burkeman suggests to get things done.

1. Focus on What Matters Most

While you may sometimes feel like everything on your to-do list must get done today, trying to do too much makes you less productive. Trying to start everything usually ends up not finishing anything. Instead focus on the few things that really matter to you.

You are never going to actually get to that empty inbox. Your to-do list will always become filled with more tasks. As Burkeman writes: “When you give up the unwinnable struggle to do everything, that’s when you can start pouring your finite time and attention into a handful of things that truly count.” Decide what matters most to you and put the rest on the side.

2. Set a Quantity Goal

You may find yourself avoiding preparing your speech or working on your project because you don’t know how to do it perfectly. Or you want your work to be high quality and you don’t feel energized enough to produce expert caliber work right now.

So try to set a quantity goal instead of a quality goal. Write one paragraph without judging it. You can edit it later.

Spend 15 minutes on your project even if you are not sure what direction to take. Or define a small ‘deliverable’ that you can accomplish in the next couple of hours. As Burkeman writes: “To define your next deliverable, clarify some outcome you could attain in a single sitting – in the next few minutes, say, or over an hour or two at most. Then work until you reach it. If you need to send a difficult email, write the email and send it, rather than beginning it then letting it fester in your drafts. For bigger projects, break off a piece: finish the research for the first section of the report; finalize the paint colors for the living room; select a workout plan and schedule your first session at the gym.”

You can control a quantity goal; quality is something you can improve after you have the momentum to begin. This strategy is a gamechanger because it enables you to actually start the work.

3. Develop a Taste for Problems

It’s tempting to think that over the horizon of attaining your next goal, you’ll no longer have any problems. Once you find the right partner, get that promotion, buy that house or have the baby – then all your problems will be solved.

But life will present you with challenges no matter what or how much you accomplish. So Burkeman suggests that you develop a taste for problems instead of hoping that they go away: “So we spend our lives leaning into the future, unconsciously deeming whatever’s happening now to be fundamentally flawed, because it’s marred by too many problems. And quite possibly deeming ourselves to be fundamentally flawed, too-or else wouldn’t we have figured out some way to eliminate all these problems by now?”

Burkeman believes that wrestling with your limitations and learning how to deal with challenges is what makes life ultimately satisfying and meaningful. As Oliver writes: “I no longer have to remain in the posture-absurd for finite humans, for whom time is so precious-of trying to get the present out of the way, en-route to the problem-free future. And I am free to aspire not to a life without problems, but to a life with ever more interesting and absorbing ones.”

4. Follow the Two Minute Rule

There are probably some tasks that you are avoiding that can even be done or at least begun within two minutes. Burkeman’s simple advice for many of these tasks on your to-do list is to just do the thing. He suggests you pick one task you can do right now in the next two minutes, do it, cross it out. And then go back to the first step to pick another task.

At any given moment, you can only ever actually be doing one thing. When Burkeman was trying to tackle his own procrastination habits he realized: “The main point – though it took me years to realize it – is to develop the willingness to just do something, here and now, as a one-off, regardless of whether it’s part of any system or habit or routine.”

5. Accept the Trade-Off

One of the most common forms of procrastination is postponing a decision you know you need to make. You avoid making the choice perhaps because you’re not ready to accept the trade-off of that choice. You don’t go to the gym before work because you don’t want to deal with the trade-off of less sleep. You postpone getting engaged because you don’t want the obligation of a commitment. You don’t look for a new job because you aren’t ready to face the unfamiliar and possibly more challenging responsibilities of a new role.

But not making a decision is also a decision. And choosing to do nothing has its own eventual consequences. As Burkeman writes: “The only two questions, at any moment of choice in life, is what the price is, and whether or not it’s worth paying. Somewhere in the confusing morass of your work or your life lurks at least one decision you could make, right now, in order to get unstuck and get moving.”

In the short span of a human life, you only have a finite amount of time to accomplish what matters to you. So decide what really matters to you today. Focus on less things to live more fully. And accept the trade-offs and the problems that inevitably come with each new choice that you make. It was said of Rabbi Simcha Bunim that he carried two slips of paper, one in each pocket. On one he wrote: Bishvili nivra ha’olam – “For my sake the world was created.” On the other he wrote: V’anokhi afar v’aefer – “I am but dust and ashes.” He would take out each slip of paper as necessary, as a reminder to himself.” It is true that you are a whole world and also true that you have a finite amount of time. Use it well.

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