How to Stop Procrastinating and Improve Your Performance

Procrastination may be the most common and damaging habit you could develop at your job. In those rare situations when procrastination benefits you or your employer, there will be many—possibly hundreds—of instances of inferior performance and/or missed opportunities caused by this habit.

Your Employer’s View

Employee procrastination can drive employers to the brink of despair and/or anger. Even some top performers develop this habit, which employers perceive as a severe deficiency and detriment to efficiency.

Some common employer concerns that identify employee procrastinators:

• Employees commenting that they are working diligently on a project or task, but never providing updates or completion times.
• Employees always scrambling and rushing to meet completion deadlines.
• Employees producing finished products that indicate hasty, slipshod completion.
• Employees submitting work well below their performance ability.

Do any of these sound familiar to you? Have you heard similar comments or perceptions from your supervisor? Have you witnessed one or more co-workers exhibiting these behaviors?

Employers may miss these signs for a brief period, but most will recognize these or similar traits if they repeat over time. You must avoid even the perception of procrastination to get on and stay on the fast track. Identifying common causes and taking action to diffuse these negative motivators should help you avoid or break this habit.

Procrastination Motivators

First, consider behaviors that identify you as a procrastinator. Do you have difficulty starting a project? Do you enjoy idea creation, but become bored with putting your suggestions in action? Do you delay or refuse projects from a fear of failure? Do you justify delay because “deadline pressure” drives you to do your best work? Do you look for reasons to delay tasks because you’re upset they were assigned to you in the first place?

Here are some classic and common procrastination motivators.

• You’re a perfectionist. Perfectionists have high (impossible?) standards and often suffer paralysis of analysis issues. Worried they won’t complete the assigned task up to their lofty standards, they spend time over-researching the subject or simply remain frozen with concern, delaying starting or completing the project at hand. Change your thoughts to “desire,” but do not “mandate” your unrealistic standards. Make yourself understand that, while it would be nice to achieve perfection, just producing the best result possible will be welcomed.
• You love a crisis. Should you believe that you only produce your best work under pressure, you will annoy many co-workers and supervisors alike by creating a crisis where there is none. Even if this process works for you, it typically is not acceptable by others, both management and staff. To combat this habit, set earlier completion deadlines for yourself, and reward yourself for meeting these personal goals. Your natural internal pressure won’t spread to your peers and, meeting personal deadlines and receiving rewards reduces your dependency on crisis.
• You embrace fantasy. Some people are wonderful creative thinkers, conjuring up one good idea after another. However, often these people find doing the work to making their idea a reality distasteful. Procrastination is the typical cause. Unless your job description stops after creating and submitting an idea, your employer will probably want you to work on its real world development. To avoid attempting a project you really don’t want to complete, save your idea until you’ve at least thought through the process necessary to bring it to fruition. Express your idea AND a potential process that breaks up the project into manageable pieces. You won’t be responsible for the entire workflow requirement that might anchor you in concrete.
• You are angry and/or resentful. Employees assigned projects they really don’t want to accomplish often become angry and/or resentful of the task and toward the person(s) assigning it to them. A classic response includes procrastination, sometimes willfully. To combat this situation, try to let your anger go. If this doesn’t work, try shifting your resentment (internally) to the person who assigned it—and away from the project itself. Find some redeeming benefit you’ll receive by completing the task properly and on time. Imagine a reward (recognition, compensation, promotion, etc.) you’ll enjoy by completing the project on deadline.
• You suffer professional fear. Fear of failure is different from personal fear of things real or imagined. It is often the mirror image of the fear of success. The origins of professional fear are too numerous to mention, but the results are the same. The fear of doing a task, even just making a phone call or sending an e-mail, immobilizes you to inactivity. Procrastination usually results. However, you can use fear as a positive motivator. Just as military heroes, astronauts, and superstar athletes often use fear to drive them to success, you can make professional fear work for you. Think about how you’ll feel when you conquer this fear and complete a project successfully. Imagine the rewards (public recognition, compensation, etc.) you'll receive for a job well done.

Procrastination is simply a bad habit, regardless of its origin. Understanding what emotions create procrastination can help you overcome it. The key is to eliminate the habit as quickly and completely as possible so you can to become a better performer and promotion candidate.