Procrastination: Yes, I know it's a gross word.

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I swear: The word “procrastination” is like nails on a chalkboard. (Please keep reading, lol.) People hear it and tune out because … it kind of makes you squirm in your seat, right? It’s a word that can hang over your head and make you feel guilty.

When I was younger, I’d procrastinate until the last second because “I just worked better under pressure.” It’s a common excuse, and while there may be some truth to it, let me rephrase it. You may work faster under pressure, but the overall long-term quality of your product will be weaker.

And, in the long term, we want stronger, more impactful work. So, we must fight procrastination in order to grow and create something meaningful.

In today’s newsletter, I want to give you some reasons that we procrastinate and then offer a few tips to get past it. 

For the past ~1.5 years, I’ve started to work toward giving up procrastination because I simply don’t have the time. I’ve trained myself to plan and work ahead so that my projects don’t look like this at the 11th hour.

However, I didn’t think about why I was procrastinating until my advanced behavioral marketing class this semester. My professor, Meng Zhu, wrote a study in the Harvard Business Review about this exact subject. You should take the time to read it, but I’ll give you a few main reasons why you may procrastinate because identifying the problem is the first step toward a solution.

• When people are faced with a far-away deadline, they are more likely to think the assignment is difficult even when it’s not. When it seems more daunting, we’re even more likely to put it off.

• The mere urgency effect: People are more likely to focus on projects with shorter deadlines, even if they’re not as important. i.e. Do you find yourself answering mindless emails vs. working on a longer project because the turnaround time is shorter? Yep. We’ve all been there.

• The reward (the end of the project) seems too far away to be realistic.

• We’re afraid of failing.

It’s obvious that procrastination affects your work when you’re cramming in something at the last minute. But it’s also making your everyday work less effective. Procrastination doesn’t always mean that you’re sitting around doing nothing. It often means that you’re focused on things that simply don’t matter as much as the bigger project on the horizon. Focusing only on simple activities does not make you a critical thinker, making it harder to make difficult decisions down the road.

So, how can we fight procrastination? Here are a few tips that are backed by research and my own experiences. 

• Create to-do lists with actionable items and intermediate targets that ladder up into your overall goal. By crossing off goals along the way, you’ll feel more accomplished every day. Creating a roadmap ahead of time will also make you less likely to fail.

• Set deadlines for yourself based on the actual scope of work, not the last possible day you can finish something. These shorter deadlines will make you less likely to abandon a project.

• Prioritize your tasks based on importance: Deadlines are one aspect of what makes a project more important than another, but it’s not the only thing. When laying out a to-do list, know that a deadline is just one factor of how you should decide to prioritize. Other factors include the client, other people on the project, activities you have outside of work etc.

• Identify when you’re least productive during the day. Mine’s usually around 3 p.m. Schedule yourself accordingly: Do not work on your biggest projects during a time when you're less productive and more likely to become discouraged.

This list is clearly not meant to be comprehensive and is very much a work-in-progress for me. However, I have seen huge strides in my happiness, quality of work, and grades when I stop waiting to do hard things at the last minute.

And remember: You have big projects and big goals because you are capable of doing big things.

Have any tips for me or for others regarding procrastination? Reply to this email or tweet me.

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