Design your productivity: A procrastinator’s survival guide
By: Hara Ledaki
Tags: Agile Methodology, Planning, Time Management, Ux Process, Procrastination

Photo by Mitchell Luo

Is there a better pair out there than Motivation & Self Discipline? Well, there is a more romantic one for sure: Motivation & Procrastination. Α relationship doomed to fail, the Romeo & Juliet of our modern lifestyle. They will never ever end up nowhere together, let’s face it already — and probably one of them has to die first, for the sake of our sanity.

Don’t want to generalise much, but I would dare say that we grew up in a generation thinking we can become anything, if we just try hard enough. We have listened to so many motivational videos, we have read so many success stories of people who made it despite all hardships, while their lives were a living hell or at least they were working in a garage, like c’mon! We have set our standards so high, that we may end up feeling unfulfilled, or failing, in various parts of our lives, whether that is career, relationships, whatever that is. We are not easily satisfied with what we have accomplished so far, and to be honest, if we were, we might as well be dead already (Hi Darwin!), or blissful human beings that do not need to read a line more of this article.

And really, there is nothing to blame in wanting to become a better version of ourselves. The real problem occurs when you suffer more than what you gain out of it, especially if you procrastinate, which leaves you more or less with… gaining nothing — except experience and anxiety, of course.

Now now, let’s start with some possible aspects of why you have not accomplished that thing yet (yes, That Thing, the one you keep postponing but keeps bothering you). It obviously may be more than one (if you are a master procrastinator), but let’s focus our energy on That One, your biggest dream or obstacle, the one that you think will make your life so much better or meaningful (whether that holds true or not is another story that you can figure out by self-reflecting, discussing or — or you will never know till you actually do it).

The difference between a dream and a goal, is a plan

Photo by Miikka Luotio

A goal without a plan, is just a wish, they say. So first you need to check, is your goal SMART?

SMART stands for goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (its criteria are attributed to Peter Drucker’s “Management by Objectives” concept).

In other words, you need to know:

why you want to accomplish something (an explanation that, to me, needs to be a bit deeper than the “I have to” reasoning, as outside motives are weaker and may put us into pressure instead of focus),

what do you define as a successful result (some may say that it’s the journey that counts!),

how exactly it is possible for you to do it (if you dream of being a pilot while you are afraid of heights, let’s say you will have a hard time at the very least)

is the timing right (not talking about the “my muse left me uninspired” excuse here, but more about whether now is the right time for you to do The Thing, if you feel prepared or capable enough, if you have other priorities at the moment etc.) and if it is worth the trouble, the heartache and your time of course. And, last but not least,

when are you going to do each little task that will lead to accomplishing your goal within the timeframe that you have set (hello Procrationation my old friend).

Photo by Brett Jordan

While viewpoints and solutions from others may be more of a placebo that a cure for each personal unique case, I believe that it doesn’t harm to try other people’s ways. After all, wanting to create your own self-made plan may actually make you procrastinate even more (one more to-do for your list — if you even have one of those). That being said (and the disclaimer that I am no phycologist or anything of the sort), I will share what has worked for me in managing to become a little better that the worst unorganized version of myself (now that’s a measurable goal!), with the hope that this might be of use for someone else out there as well.

The most important thing that I had to realise the hard way, is that no, it’s not an eternal trap that you are caught in with no light at the end of the tunnel. You have exits and they are three and very specific (no methodology here, just my point of view, so keep that in mind):

Just Do That Thing

1.1 Do it as is (using plans, using help of other people that can keep you committed, using help of people that can contribute, using whatever means you have)

1.2 Come up with an alternative approach to reach the same goal, without necessarily having to do the exact thing. Just be aware, that if you reject a socially acceptable path to accomplish something (e.g. be certified to be recognized as being able to do something), you may need to be prepared to put in 2x the effort to prove yourself, with no certain outcome, and you may also need to face the practical or even emotional barrier of others not approving your way. Put That Thing aside and stop worrying about it

(in a backlog list of items that you have decided to deal with later, due to prioritization of Other Things that are more important at the moment, that either are prerequisites of doing it, or are unrelated but you would risk failing both and being overwhelmed if you kept both at the same time) Abandon ship and drop That Thing into the abyss

That may be the toughest decision, but still. Nothing can drag forever, especially That Thing. At some point you will need to face the reality of the situation — do you even have enough acceptable reasons to put it aside for so long, and even if yes, do you realistically have the chances to get back on track (try to not make such a decision unless you are in a clear state of mind and it’s not the negativity speaking— as in the case where something unfortunate happened to you, you may need to settle/resolve that first and decide afterwards). In any case, you need to be honest with yourself and conscious about the fact of our mortal, time-constrained lifespans. You need to either do something about it, pause it temporarily (careful there) or decide to withdraw from it, if it is something that bothers your quality of life on an everyday basis.

If you chose curtain 1 (hooray!), or even 2, there are practical ways and planning methods that can bring you to the driver’s seat, instead of watching your dreams go by as time flies. What works for me is a to-do list (no surprise there) that my business coach and I have compiled together, and we evaluated it and tweaked it again and again for months to make sure it worked — and by “worked” means me becoming consistent on checking and updating it and making sure to keep crossing things off the list on a daily basis, rain on shine. It’s a lot tougher than it sounds, so what I learned through the process is:

Photo by Danielle MacInnes

A. It needs to be a method that relates to the way you think and to your habits. For my case, we combined the facts that I am a designer, a perfectionist, I am very analytical and I hate deadlines, with my familiarity to the agile software development model, and it clicked to me. In other words, I have to launch a redesigned product — (which is the Me.2) that has some features (which are my goals).

B. You need to get into the mindset of the required effort & pain it takes to change your toxic habits, and be understanding to yourself for some failures here and there, till you get there. After all, if That Thing was easy, you would have already done it by now! Negativity, lack of trust in yourself and regret maybe your unannounced guests, but it’s fine, as long as they do not overstay their welcome.

“Today is a new day. Your future does not equal your past” ~ Michael Hyatt

It all started when, after self-reflecting and realising that if I wanted to accomplish demanding goals -both personal and work related ones-, I should be much more organized and disciplined than trying to save the day last moment, I got coaching support (grateful that the company I work for was willing to invest in us enough to provide us with business coaching). To this day (seven months later), my coach still assists me in this battle with procrastination (checking on my progress by asking all those cruel questions, like “Have you done it, yes or no?”, and trying to refine our model if the answer is no), just to give you a sense of how difficult change habits can be. So, what we did after recognising an area that could be improved AND I was willing to do so, we gradually came up with a (personalized) plan that could be phrased like this:

Photo by Slidebean

Start with all your high level goals, or areas of focus (specific goals or whole categories like “health”, “career”). Big goals need to have a roadmap with milestones, and milestones have tasks that will lead to accomplishing the goal. From the remaining tasks, the ones that are too big to accomplish in a week, need to be further broken down to sub-tasks. You now have a big list of tasks. If you can manage to approximately estimate the total time that you can afford for your tasks in a weekly basis, plus the approximate time of completion for each task and each tasks’ priority, you can select the tasks for this week (and this month, if you want to be proactive). If estimation is a headache for you or you think this is too complex, you can select the tasks based on your gut feeling (like cooking without measuring) and get better at it week by week, with trial and error. Tasks, especially repeated ones, ideally get timeboxed, using e.g. recurring calendar meetings (with yourself). Even in the case where this does not go as planned, and you still end up postponing “that meeting”, if you keep being engaged & persistent & do not miss the deadline, you will eventually get it done (which is a progress compared to “someday”). After the selection, the remaining tasks go to a “backlog” list, where they are not tied to any date or plan. They will stay there till they are selected to be moved to a weekly “sprint”. Last but not least; using this method, the plan needs to be agile and re-evaluated on a weekly basis (e.g if a task doesn’t make it this week, it moves to the next. If too many tasks were moved to the next, the estimation was probably incorrect or you were not persistent enough — in that case, you should note down the incident with date, what happened and why it happened, as this will help you foresee & avoid similar cases in the future, or even make you re-evaluate your whole strategy).

This weekly plan needs to live somewhere where you can easily access it and cross-off tasks (it can even be hand written notes, I prefer a simple app that I have both in my phone & laptop). If you check it daily for 5 mins or so, along with something pleasant like having your coffee first thing in the morning (tip from my mentor) and being consistent with it, some magic starts to happen:

Anxiety, uncertainty, and that dark cloud over your head is significantly reduced. You now know that you do not have to constantly think about all those things daily, and you do not need to worry you may forget something, or feel overwhelmed about what to do first, as long as you commit on checking and updating your list for few mins every day. That way, you can focus the rest of your energy solely on getting today’s task(s) done. Your progress may not always be a straight line, and there may be ups and downs to the success rate of the plan from week to week (or day to day), but that’s why your plan is agile; so that it can withstand such fallbacks.

And the way to think about it really is simple to the core of it: Some people are natural at this, they do not need any assistance to stay productive and organized (they may be few, but still!). That shouldn’t stop us -common mortals- from trying to become better versions of ourselves, even if we never manage to become natural at this. Right at this moment, I am writing in a language that is not my mother tongue, I just learned how to do it. And, I may never be as fluent as a native, but that doesn’t need to stop me from using it, does it? Same with using productivity tricks, even if you wouldn’t call yourself a master of productivity.

What keeps you on track with your goals? I would love to hear your own approaches in the comments!