The song, Manaña, suggests a casual attitude about procrastination at home. The faucet leaks. The roof is falling down. Rain comes through a smashed window and the car is broken down. Manaña is good enough. Someday these things will all get done.
The Manaña song does more than express a shantytown image. You'll find home maintenance and improvement projects languishing in every apartment complex and home neighborhood.
If you are like most, your residence doesn't look like a model home from Architectural Digest. It looks lived in. So, there is at least one home improvement task-probably more--that you have delayed that you tell yourself you'll do later.
You want to clear the clutter from your garage. A strip of wallpaper has started to detach from the wall. The cobwebs in the corners fascinate you, but you wonder what your friends think about this display. There is no deadline for these somewhat voluntary activities. Such things can be done later. Diversionary activities are easier and rewarding in their own way. So you daydream, browse through a bookstore, and read War and Peace. But you are still not meeting your goals. You may have a nagging feeling about the delays.
Because your home maintenance and improvement work is at your discretion, this is different from meeting fixed deadlines assigned to you by someone else. So what do you do? You could sing Manaña while thinking, "Indeed, things could be worse." Meanwhile, the rain keeps leaking through the roof. You can heap blame onto yourself to prod yourself into action. However, blaming yourself for a tendency to procrastinate is normally a wasted effort. If blame for procrastination was a universal prophylactic you'd see a flood of books hit the market on how to self-actualize yourself by blaming yourself for pointless delays.
Let's look at six proactive steps to prevent procrastination that you can also use to catch up with what you're your been putting off.
Six Proactive Steps to Prevent Procrastination
What will it be? You can continue to let your emotions dominate and propel you onto an initially easier procrastination path. In the longer term, the initially easier way tends to be the hard way. As an alternative, you can try a different path. You can stop the manaña tune that keeps playing in your head.
On a procrastination prevention path you have different choices and decisions to make. These choices and decisions come into play when you (1) challenge yourself to control your procrastination thoughts and actions, (2) choose one corrective action over another, (3) decide when to start, (4) figure out how to measure your progress. This list of choices and decisions goes on. However, there is a hidden trap. Indecision about choices can support an endless procrastination platform. Your awareness of the risk can prevent this from happening.
Use the following six-step proactive self-help methods to prevent procrastination. Use them to help yourself whittle down your "to do list" of delayed home improvement projects.
- What is your most pressing and important home improvement project? By identifying and labeling your number one priority, you are less likely to distract yourself with other activities that are less meaningful or pressing to do.
- What is the first step you can take to meet your home-improvement objective? By defining the step, you've honed in on where to start the process.
- When will you start? A declaration of intent to start quickly waters down if you vaguely say "later." Pick the earliest possible time to take the first step. Write down the day and time, and make this note visible.
- Break inertia. Use my famous five-minute plan where you agree to start for five minutes. At the end of that time, decide if you'll continue for another five minutes, and so on until you've decided to stop or you've reached your objective for the day.
- Take reactive inhibition into account. This is a reluctance to continue with an activity that you've previously performed. Add a bit of novelty to each new phase of your project. If a new insight comes to mind, try it. By introducing novelty into the process, you may find your curiosity drive re-awakened. You may find the work more engaging, and that makes it easier to persist.
- Accept reality. You may not like the work that goes into a home maintenance project. However, work is called work for a reason. It involves labor and time and no guarantees that you can avoid corrections. Work also offers opportunities for accomplishment and for strengthening your follow-through skills and your "will" to persist.
You can use this six-step proactive procrastination prevention technique for future home improvement challenges. You also can use it to catch up on what you've put off at home, school or at work. (Procrastination hotspots at school and work can be addressed and delays prevented. Parts two and three of this four part procrastination prevention series tells how to prevent procrastination at school and at work.)
For up-to-date ideas on containing and preventing procrastination, see:
http://www.amazon.com/End-Procrastination-Now-Psychological-Appro...
Dr. Bill Knaus
