I'll Explain How I Defeated Procrastination, Right After I Watch Another YouTube Video
What do high school students, and experienced professionals have in common? We all unwisely put off our most important work.
Welcome to the Scarlet Ink newsletter. I'm Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. Each week I write a newsletter article on tech industry careers and tactical leadership advice.
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My headline is the tiniest bit hyperbolic. To be slightly more accurate, I overcame procrastination today.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, I frequently find it difficult to start writing. I’ll have a few hours free and decide that these hours should be used for writing.
And then I’ll watch seven YouTube videos reviewing the Camp Chef Woodwind Pro Smoker, trying to decide if I really need a pellet smoker. Which I think I do. But then my wife mentions her worries about the pollutants from smoking meat. So I close that YouTube window and read some studies on Google about pollutants and the risks of eating smoked meat.
Finally, I decide it’s time to concentrate, so I close those Google windows and open up Spotify to turn on my writing playlist.
But I noticed a Summer Rock Classics playlist. I wonder if I have all the good songs from there in my playlists. Butterfly by Crazy Town? How is it possible that wasn’t on my liked playlist? Added!
Right. So I go back and select my writing playlist, which hasn’t been doing its job very well at all.
I open up Substack, and I stare at a blank article template, waiting to be inspired.
The fact this article exists proves that I did indeed defeat procrastination and achieve my goal of writing an article. Ergo, my article title is acceptable and not at all clickbait.
However, I admit that using the word defeat is not 100% accurate. It sounds fun in a headline, but you don’t really defeat procrastination. You defeat your enemies, and see them driven before you. But procrastination?
You learn to deal with procrastination. You learn mechanisms and techniques to make it less of an issue. Procrastination is your mind's way of saying, “I need some relief please!” because your mind is feeling pain or stress. You can’t defeat procrastination. You identify your mental issues, build mechanisms, and that enables you to procrastinate less.
I've had my share of procrastination experiences. I've spent (literally) entire weeks at work where I accomplished nothing other than attending meetings. My exercise plans have been put off until tomorrow for months at a time.
This is a big part of life for most of us. Everywhere you go, there you are. I know I’ll always struggle with procrastination (as many of us do). However, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned a bit more about how procrastination works, and some tricks which work for me (and probably for you).
What is procrastination?
I’ve read quite a bit on the topic, particularly when I have something important I really should be working on. Why would my mind desperately trick me into repeatedly opening up Reddit and then YouTube and then Reddit again, and then my Gmail, while all I’m trying to do is come up with an article topic?
The best summary I’ve read is that it’s short-term mood repair. In other words, it’s not about the task itself. It’s about the emotions related to the task. What you’re actually avoiding are the negative emotions related to a task. What types of negative emotions?
Boredom
Lack of meaning in the work
Ambiguity about how to approach the work
Fear of the future (before or after completing the task)
Fear of people’s reaction to your work
When we procrastinate, we're choosing to feel better now in return for feeling worse in the future. We're applying a band-aid to repair our current emotions, although we logically know that we'll regret it later. I mean, how many times have you been happy with yourself for putting something off? It’s crazy that our stupid lizard brains trick us over and over again to put something off when we know that we’ll regret it later.
I sat down to write today, but I didn't have a topic picked out. I have a high (to probably an unhealthy level) bar for myself, and I’m regularly unhappy with my topic options. Starting articles is hard for me, because I’ll reject dozens of ideas before I pick one I’m happy (enough) with. In fact, I’ll regularly write a thousand words, and then discard the whole thing, because I feel it’s not good enough.
I felt frustration today that I couldn’t find a good topic. I had planned to exercise before writing, and I was annoyed that I had decided to exercise afterwards. Additionally, since my writing is public, I feel a general level of stress that my article won’t land well, and I’ll get negative feedback.
These negative feelings and emotions and thoughts are background noise, and sometimes I don’t even notice them. What I do notice is that I’ll think for a few moments, and then I’m back on YouTube.
Procrastination and shooting yourself in the foot.
I’ve seen dozens of people like Adelina. And the story I’ll relay happened many times with multiple employees. It’s amazing how often people wear blinders to their own procrastination.
Adelina was a great engineering manager. She was extremely kind to her team members. She had a high bar, but her engineers worked hard to meet her expectations. Her interactions with our product team were professional, and she cared deeply about customer experience.
I was impressed. Absolutely happy with 99% of what she did, and so I sat down with her to chat about her career.
“Hey Adelina, you’ve been just nailing this engineering manager job.” I said. “Your team likes you, your peers like working with you, and your team is successful. Are you interested in moving to the senior engineering manager position?”
Adelina smiled and nodded. “I’d love that. It is a bit intimidating, but I think I’d like the job. What timeline are we talking about?”
“You’ve been delivering well for almost two years. We could absolutely start rounding up feedback before the next promotion cycle. It’s not guaranteed to be approved this next cycle, but I’d like to see what people say.” I said, pulling up some docs on my computer. “Here, I’m sending you a template for your promotion document. If you could please fill in the blank sections in the narrative where it explains what you’ve accomplished, that would be a great starting point. Don’t bother to write it professionally, I can help wordsmith later. I’m just looking for detailed bullet points with projects you’ve done.”
Adelina looked slightly concerned, but nodded. “Ok, sounds good. I’ll do that.”
“Ok. As soon as you have that ready, we can talk through it, and I can start asking your peers for feedback.” I said. And we moved onto other issues.
Adelina was on the ball with her normal work. I assumed she’d be on top of this one as well. Except two weeks went by, and she didn’t show me any filled in promotion template. I asked, and she’d say that she’d get it to me soon.
In our third one-on-one, I didn’t accept “soon” as an answer.
“We’re still fine on timeline, but I’d like to make progress on your promotion if possible.” I said. “It shouldn’t take more than an hour to make those bullet points. What’s the hold up?”
Adelina looked uncomfortable. “I’ve just been really busy. It’s hard to set aside the time to do it.”