I have a confession to make. I am a world-class procrastinator. I have been building an online business part-time since 2007, and there have been stretches — sometimes months at a time — where I barely got anything done. Not because I did not have time, and not because I did not know what to do. I just could not get myself off the couch.
If that sounds familiar, you are not alone. Procrastination is one of the most destructive forces in entrepreneurship, especially when you are working solo at night after your day job.
Why You Procrastinate
The first step to beating procrastination is understanding why it happens to you specifically. It is not the same for everyone. Here are the most common reasons I have seen in myself and in conversations with other entrepreneurs:
- Overwhelm. You have so many half-finished projects and competing priorities that you do not know where to start. So you start nothing. This was my biggest problem. My business had become a sprawling mess of incomplete websites and abandoned ideas.
- Fear of failure. If you never finish and launch, you never have to face the possibility that it will not work. Procrastination becomes a safety mechanism.
- Boredom. Some parts of building a business are genuinely tedious. Writing product descriptions, formatting blog posts, debugging code — these tasks do not exactly light a fire under you.
- Perfectionism. You keep polishing and tweaking because nothing ever feels ready. This is just fear of failure wearing a disguise.
What Actually Works
Once you know your pattern, you can build strategies around it. Here is what has worked for me:
Start the week with a short task list. I plan four tasks per day for the work week — one for each major area of my business, plus one flexible task. That is 28 tasks for the week, each one small enough to finish in a single work session. When you know exactly what to do next, the decision fatigue that fuels procrastination disappears.
Kill the clutter. If your business has become a mess of unfinished projects, clean house. Archive the ideas that are not going anywhere. Shut down the websites that are not producing. Give yourself permission to focus on fewer things done well.
Just start. Sometimes, the hardest part is literally opening your laptop and beginning. Commit to working for just ten minutes. Once you get past that initial resistance, momentum usually takes over. Getting off the couch and getting started is often all it takes.
The Bottom Line
Procrastination is not a character flaw. It is a symptom, and once you identify the cause, you can address it directly. Figure out what is holding you back, build a simple system to counteract it, and then get to work. Your business is not going to build itself while you watch reruns.
For more practical motivation and productivity tips, listen to the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.
Ah, procrastination. The death of so many great ideas.
The best tip I ever heard for dealing with procrastination is to get started. Not to force yourself to do something necessarily, but to just start. If I’m avoiding writing an article for example, I might give myself permission to go do something else, but only AFTER I spend 5 minutes outlining. That’s it, just five minutes, then I can be free to continue procrastinating.
But 9 times out of 10, I don’t stop at just the outline. Once you get started, it’s much easier to continue. I think I learned that in physics class long ago, and it’s still true.
Physics? Are you a science or engineering type?
HaHa! No. But I’m the geek type and it sounded like a cool class to take. Which it was.
I was beginning to think you fell off the face of the earth. As you know, I’m pretty lazy 🙂 Fortunately I don’t have the time restrictions some people have, so I can usually start to see when my procrastination starts catching up and I can get my butt in gear.
I will admit that all the procrastination over the years has cost me. It’s hard telling how much more money I would be making now if it weren’t for that… I don’t even want to know!
Great points though and you’ve motivated me to cut out some of the dead time and get a little more work done each day.
Mark – you and I have the same issue – we spend 60+ hours a week working for “the man”. So, I really don’t know if procrastination is the issue so much as time constraints and an over-generous belief of what we can accomplish on a part time basis.
We all suffer from lack of focus, and we have ourselves to blame. To many gurus telling us what to do. AND, a buzz in our ear telling us that our ______(adsense site, membership site, etc.) is old and archaic unless we are using this new thing.
And stop procastinating on that podcast! 😉
LOL — that is exactly the problem. Will do.
Mark
Boy can I relate! The to-do list get’s rearranged constantly… because I don’t want to do this or that right now.
I love Cindy’s idea of just giving yourself permission to play… AFTER… 5 minutes of work.
The idea of breaking down your project or idea into baby steps is powerful. The task won’t seem so daunting.
My biggest problem is that I forget! I forget that I purchased this thing and need to use it in that way.
The latest blunder happened when I was searching for a good domain name for a new project, looked to see if it was available… and it wasn’t.
I checked WHO-IS and it was ME!! LOL… Duh.
I may think I’m organized – but that just proved that what I think and reality are miles apart. 🙂
My first thought while reading this is I am a victim of procrastination too. But after a moments reflection I had to admit I am instead, a willing accomplice. Shame on me.
Gotta get back to work. Thanks for the article.
I’m certainly in contention for the title of World’s Worst Procrastinator. But I’ve found that I’m more effiicient now that I upgraded Evernote. I have a couple notes on there that I use as Honey Dew lists. And the more-frequent reminders are more likely to catch me in the mood to do thins I tend to put off.
The two main reasons I procrastinate are (1) don’t know what to do or perhaps how to do the task (and may not be interested in figuring out how or where to learn what or how), or (2) don’t LIKE doing the task that needs to be done. Sometimes I also trip over fear of failure, but it’s really mostly about #1 or #2 for me. If I don’t like the job at hand, there’s not a lot to be done about it but to force myself to jump right in (altho I sometimes fantasize about having enough income to outsource some of those types of things — and that’s a decent alternative for some people).
If I don’t know how or what I need to do, I remind myself that once I’ve tackled this, (1) I’ll have a new skill or bit of knowledge under my belt, (2) I may go on learning about this, but the hard part — the procrastination-promoting part — will have been conquered, probably. THEN I try to wake up Curious Me or remember times when I jumped right in and it wasn’t so painful or I was delighted with what I learned, or it didn’t take any time at all, etc. Whatever works / all of the above.
Glad you’re back, Mark.
What synergy! I just wrote an article entitled, Productivity versus Procrastination for my newsletter. For a similar take on the subject, view it here: http://www.thebusinesspractitioner.com/newsletter.htm