Procrastination Solutions: Ready, Set, Go

The last chapter of Dr. Fuschia Sirois’ book Procrastination offers a final three-part strategy to help reduce procrastination. We’ve already covered other strategies that she offers, dealing with mindset, perspective, and our relationship to our future selves. This last three-part strategy deals with context, specifically with trying to set things up both internally and externally to support momentum toward getting things done. Dr. Sirois calls this the “Ready, Set, Go” approach. Here’s how that breaks down:

Ready: Being Prepared to Take Action

This first step of the strategy has to do with clearing some common obstacles to taking action. One common obstacle is that we actually don’t have the information we need to start acting. When the task ahead of us is undefined and unstructured, this can create feelings of uncertainty and discomfort that make procrastination more likely. So one way to get this obstacle out of the way is to make sure you have the information you need to do the task ahead of you. If you don’t, you may need to do a bit of research or talk to someone with experience in that area to determine a plan of action.

Another common obstacle is dealing with a task so big and complex that we feel overwhelmed, again making procrastination more likely. The answer here is straightforward: break it down into smaller subtasks that you can take one at a time. This is where having a plan of action from talking with an expert can help too, as they can help you develop a plan with a series of subtasks rather than taking on the whole complex goal at once.

So, to be Ready to take action, make sure you have the information needed to have a plan of action, made of small subtasks that you can take one at a time.

Set: Setting up a Supporting Environment

Following through with a plan of action is going to involve multiple occasions of choosing long-term goals over short-term behaviors that manage emotion. Once you’ve got a habit going this will be less of an issue, but initially at least it’s going to be important to have an environment set up that makes these decisions easier and more likely.

That means managing the “cues” in your environment, the little reminders that make it more likely you’ll take one action over the other. First, you’ll need to identify the cues that lead you toward short-term behaviors that get in the way of taking action. If you’re trying to eat differently, this might mean removing unhealthy foods from your kitchen. If you’re trying to start a mindfulness practice, this might mean removing your phone from the room where you’d like to try practicing. Second, you can introduce cues into your environment that remind you of the actions you’d like to be taking. For example, having running magazines on your coffee table if you’re trying to start a running routine. Or having your musical instrument set out and easy to access if you’re trying to start practicing routinely.

Set up your environment so you’re running into more cues reminding you of the action you want to take, and fewer of the cues reminding you of distractions.

Go: Action Over Motivation

It is a very common thing to hear in therapy that a client wants to start some new behavior or habit but that they just don’t have the motivation. The narrative here is that if they could just find the motivation somehow, or if they were just a more motivated person, that they could then take the action they want to take.

This actually turns out to be backwards. Motivation is not actually essential to getting started, but only seems so to the extent that we believe that’s the case. In reality, motivation is a side effect resulting from taking action. As Dr. Sirois puts it, “Motivation comes from taking action.”

Believing that our Future Self will be more capable than we are now, or that we need to feel a specific feeling before we can take action, or that there is such thing as a “perfect time” to start - These are all just narratives that put off doing the only thing that gives us the sense of momentum and motivation we’re wanting: action.

Start with a very small achievable act, even if it seems ridiculously small or easy, because just by taking this first step you are by definition no longer procrastinating. You are acting, which creates the increased likelihood you’ll act again.