Procrastination May Be Hurting Your Relationships: Do This Now
It happens to all of us. You have a task on your to-do list, an assignment you need to research, an appointment you haven’t scheduled, or a pile of paper that’s been sitting on your work table for a month. Then, procrastination overtakes your good intention.
Procrastination hits us across all areas of life and work.
Why is it so hard to shake off?
Research tells us that procrastination is emotional. We resist what seems painful or unpleasant.
When I need to overhaul the clutter in my bedroom after two weeks of endless meetings and early morning mad dashes to the office, I schedule a movie night with myself. After an hour or so, engrossed in a funny or complicated plot and a relaxing beverage, my room is spotless. I can finally make it across the room with a clear mind. The crazy thing is when I’m finished, I sit there wondering why I just couldn’t get the darn thing done.
Do you wonder why what seemed so unpleasant in the beginning usually makes you feel so good about the end result?
What’s your procrastination peeve?
Tim Pychyl, a psychologist professor at Carleton University, explains, “...procrastination is by definition an irrational behavior because it runs counter to our own idea of what will make us happy.”
If this emotional technique is doomed from the start, why are we wired to do it, and is this emotion-focused coping strategy harming your work and life relationships?
In this post, we’ll explore whether your personality type is prone to procrastination behaviors. I’ll give you the top procrastination coping struggles that could be affecting your work and life relationships. I’ll also offer practical ways to overcome procrastination with highly productive ways to cope with those resistance hurdles and get your goals accomplished! Let’s DIG IN.
Procrastination May Be Hurting Your Relationships: Identify the Three Top Reasons + Do This Now.
What procrastination behaviors fit your personality?
Do you need time constraints and limitations on how long to complete a task, or else you’ll take forever wanting to get it “just right”?
Do you need a push to move your vision from a great idea to a successful plan by answering and grabbing hold of the important “w” questions? Who, what, where, when, which, why…
Sometimes you can worry yourself into getting stuck. Dr. Linda Sapidin, psychologist and author of How to Beat Procrastination in the Digital Age, says, “not making a decision is, in fact, making a decision.” Is that you?
Why are there so many of us that love the rush of waiting until the last minute to get the darn thing done? Being in crisis mode with every task and project will ultimately exhaust your creative energy and health. Is the very last-minute approach all you can hope for in getting important work accomplished?
Choosing to act is a different perspective than feeling the demand to act. Maybe you’re more comfortable not doing it because no action feeds the quiet rebellion you crave. You also believe by not completing a task, you take the pressure off on having to manage expectations with yourself and others. Do you believe your defiance is a legitimate action in the goal-completion process?
Being overwhelmed by having too many priorities can be common when you want to please everyone. However, overwhelm can keep you from accomplishing goals because you’ve succumbed to the “urgency trap” and haven’t mastered using the Eisenhower matrix. Do you have trouble prioritizing urgent over important and considering the consequences of your choice at that moment? Are you uncomfortable setting healthy boundaries and asking for help?
Did you see your personality traits in any of these examples?
Are you an Overbooker, Rebellious, a Novelty Seeker, Pressure-Performer, or Perfectionist?
Don’t despair. There are strategies for dealing with the most stubborn procrastinator type. Accountability checkpoints can be done with a partner or team member to create bonding and strengthen the relationship.
The first step is acknowledging the emotions and state of mind keeping you from taking action. Determine the irrational drive to delay that’s ultimately delaying positive outcomes within your work and life relationships.
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the TOP Procrastination Behaviors that could be hurting your work and life relationships.
1. Putting off conversations about your feelings.
It’s important to communicate feelings of anxiety, hopelessness, or overwhelm. If you don’t deal with persistent stress or the underlying cause for negative emotions, you won’t get an opportunity to cultivate healthy emotion-coping strategies needed for life success.
I’ve learned that having many multiple projects at the same time, for an extended time longer than three months, isn’t always the best way to accomplish the best signature work. In fact, if your job is project manager of all of them, it’s crucial that you have a keen awareness of your boundaries, and when it’s time to let someone know if you’re experiencing major mood swings, feeling atypically distracted or downright disorganized. Recently, I discovered in my Stillness time that I was emotionally exhausted. My husband called it “a funk”. When I took Shabbat and reflected in quiet, I realized I was angry and suffering from decision fatigue.
A 2021 article with the American Medical Association characterized it this way:
Dr. MacLean, a psychiatrist, stated, “Decision fatigue is the idea that after making many decisions, your ability to make more and more decisions over the course of a day becomes worse. The more decisions you have to make, the more fatigue you develop and the more difficult it can become.”
I realized how quickly the unconscious and conscious decisions were beginning to add up. Once I communicated my feelings to a trusted confidant, I was able to cleanse my mindset, grab the thoughts that were building up into a negative landmine, and innovate a personal and professional plan to ignite transformation. Once I was able to re-consider the story I was telling myself, I was able to reconnect with my personal and professional relationships in a healthier way.
Use These Strategies:
>>Communicate with the person or team and let them know if you need to move the deadline. Yes, this is a difficult conversation, but you will take a giant step in developing realistic project timelines for future tasks and projects. Reframe what is going on in a positive manner to yourself and others.
>>If your deadline is non-negotiable, snag someone to assist you with the non-important, non-urgent tasks so you can focus on the important, urgent, and non-urgent tasks that contribute to long-term success. Your key role is to identify any major production and deliverable gaps that are keeping the project moving from moving along with the integrity [you know] it should have.
>>If lack of motivation is the issue from either your end or the other person(s) you’re working on this project with, get crystal clear on what motivates you and the other team members. Ask yourself these four deeper questions:
What is the internal drive for satisfaction, joy, and benefits you want to receive? For the other person(s)?
What is the extrinsic benefit, material possession, or aspiration you want to receive? For the others?
Is this task or project in line with your One Big Goal or One Big Team Goal? Name the Goal, and put that sticky everywhere ~ on the fridge, in the team kitchen, on your car dashboard, at the top of your whiteboard…
Do you need to chunk the tasks with meaningful rewards?
2. Having difficulty managing digital distractors.
We’re back to the subject of focus.
Relationships take connection, and they can take a tailspin when your focus is largely on connectivity with a smartphone or similar overstimulating device instead of interpersonal bonding.
For some, the temporary rewards of scrolling feeds can give more pleasure than human relationship-building and connection. It’s pretty amazing how many times a large group of people are more focused on their devices than on the art of gathering. You may have seen this even in a restaurant dining atmosphere meant to bring the delight of good food and friendships together.
How are we hurting our life relationships?
How is switching back and forth between real-life and screen activities hurting your ability to connect with in-person friendships?
First, it exposes your motivation level to engage with humans and deal with challenging emotions or cope with the negative moods of others at work or in life. Should you consider what your behavior is communicating? Are you expressing boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, or self-doubt?
Again, it may be time to recognize that you need to improve your emotion regulation coping skills. Digital distractions will only offer momentary relief.
Use these strategies:
>> Reframe the task by considering a positive aspect of what will happen if you limit your device use and offer the other person eye contact and possibly a smile. Remind yourself of a time you did something similar, and it turned out O.K.
>> Imagine what the team or individual would think if you let them see you polishing your active listening skills. Think about the beneficial outcome. What might your boss or partner say when you show them empathy and the attentive connection they’ve been looking for? How will you feel about yourself after you accomplish this strategy?
>> Place the device in a hard-to-reach place while communicating with your partner or completing a project with a team member. If you focus on the relationship and remain accountable by solving the issue without getting distracted easily, this could restore any trust you need to gain from earlier digital distractions.
3. The lack of initiative and motivation is causing a disconnect.
If you are struggling with starting, finishing, or completing a task, check to see whether your readiness to do the action is in sync with the individual or team you’re working with.
Differing motivation factors can cause friction in a relationship when one is deadline-driven, and the other is task-driven.
Task-driven people understand the process of getting the task done and have the skills to do it, but their idea of urgency may not align with their partner. It’s always a good idea to begin a project or task with a discussion of what you think they require of you.
Are you both in agreement with how much time it’s going to take from start to finish? Unrealistic expectations can hinder motivation and initiative. While motivation is the outward power that enables you to act, the initiative is the internal freedom to choose to act. The latter is totally up to every individual’s inner drive and attitude. Procrastination can occur when negative emotions overtake initiative and readiness. Your intended actions have to rise above your mood.
The relationship becomes tense when an imbalance in motivation arises.
Use these strategies:
>> Before you start the project, openly discuss any aversion either of you has regarding the task or situation. By stating what you or your team member feels is unpleasant about the task itself, both of you can use this knowledge to better manage expectations and brainstorm how to motivate one another. This will also help deal with realities when one of you sees the other not on task and losing focus.
>> Practice working on long-term personal and professional goals. Our minds are used to focusing on short-term needs. This “present bias” leads us naturally toward prioritizing the quickest, most comfortable payoffs closest to the present time. Learning to engage with our future selves may help us make better future-oriented decisions by doing planning tasks now. We may also see the fuller meaning of staying the course with relationship commitments.
Remember that procrastination is part of being human, and the dynamics of your personality do impact and influence your decision to take short-term good feelings over long-term satisfaction.
Increase your emotional and social intelligence by cultivating a greater awareness of frustrations that are mounting because of the negative effects of procrastination. Create an accountability structure that allows for human realities while overcoming negative coping habits to achieve a sense of team accomplishment.
Be comforted knowing that everyone procrastinates on something. Express empathy, forgiveness, and hopeful perseverance toward your partner and yourself.
Taking time to cultivate a better and deeper understanding of your Blended Self will increase your ability to identify the most meaningful solutions when dealing with procrastination.
Use EJ’s DIG IN integrative model as you work to uncover the underlying emotional issue and rewire bad habits :
Dedicate time to Stillness.
Innovate cleansing.
Grab the thought.
Ignite Transformation.
Nurture your new self.