Success Series: What successful people know about procrastination

I've been writing this blog for over three years, and the most popular blog article by far is one I wrote in 2011 on....drumroll please....procrastination. 

People find this post from Google searching - and it seems students are Google searching procrastination a lot. 

Which tells me two things:

1) Students struggle with procrastination.
2) They want to get better.

I've read dozens of books about successful people and met many successful people, from CEO's to non-profit founders to New York Times Best selling authors to college presidents. Something has really struck me about my interactions with these people:

They don't seem to procrastinate. 

Seriously. Of all the people I connect with and e-mail, those who are most successful tend to get back to me the fastest. It almost doesn't make sense.

But it's true. 

When I sought out people to review my book for the inside and back covers, without fail those who were the most successful - the ones I thought would be the least likely to get back to me - got back to me before those who hadn't reached those heights in their careers.  

How can that be? My theory is that they got to where they are because they don't procrastinate - they just get things done right away, and are really good at knowing what is important. 

They only do the important things - and instead of procrastinating unimportant things, they just delegate them or get them out of their life. 

Successful people get to where they are by prioritizing the important things. 

Sometimes I procrastinate cleaning the kitchen or organizing a drawer. But I never procrastinated my school work when I was a student. Seriously, never.

Not because I'm just amazing. But because inherently I knew this was important. I wanted it. I wanted to do well. And I knew I had to get it done right away - I had to take action on an essay the day it was due to start to build momentum. Because I wasn't immune to procrastination - I just learned to protect myself against it. 

Procrastination can be a vicious cycle. Because the more you put something off the bigger it seems and the less you'll want to do it because it just seems so daunting.

One of the best ways to fight procrastination is to act on important tasks right away.

When you get an assignment - do something to move it forward right away. For example, when you get an essay assignment, do some research immediately, check out a book that will help you, or format a basic outline and save the document on your computer. I'm talking 5 minutes here.

The first step builds momentum that makes it seem less overwhelming. Sometimes you'll feel so buzzy from getting something done that you'll want to keep going. 

If that doesn't work, ask yourself if you need to raise the level of importance of your overall goal that the task relates to.

Is college actually important to you? Does getting the best grade you can really matter to you? Why are you in college? What do you want?

Sometimes procrastination might mean something isn't that important to you. Or maybe you're not just totally connecting how this task can actually help you get where you want to go.

Figure out how to raise the level of importance and put cues into your routine that will help remind you of that importance (like reading your goals every morning or meeting weekly with a mentor).

Or maybe sometimes you're procrastinating something because it's really not what you want. Maybe you need to change your major. Maybe you need to research a new path. 

Whatever you do, don't ignore procrastination. Take some time to think about what's happening and do something about it. I know, telling procrastinators to not procrastinate thinking about procrastination. Ha. 

But you get what I'm saying. And I know you can do this because, hey, you read this entire article, right? That means there's something that is important to you that you want to stop procrastinating.

Don't do anything else before you do something to move that task forward right now. Seriously. Stop reading. Go! ;) 

How to study and avoid procrastination in college

I have a confession to make: I procrastinate.

This is weird for me to say, because as my avid readers know, I'm the kind of person who does work way ahead of time; I never procrastinated in college.

However, in the past year of having my own speaking and consulting business, I'd started to notice a procrastination problem: I wouldn't start organizing my speeches until the last minute. 

I love giving speeches, but I often dreaded planning them out. 

My speeches are very organic, personal, and customized; I never do the exact same speech twice, which makes for a great experience, but an intensive planning process every time. 

And up until recently the only process I knew to develop each unique speech was to sit in front of a blank Word document, think about my audience's needs, type out an outline, practice the speech, and then build the PowerPoint. 

Seems simple enough, but as you know from having essay assignments, staring at that blank screen is torture. 

I recently read the best book I've ever read on giving presentations and it sparked an entire new process of developing speeches. 

I just finished enacting my new process (I'm writing this on a Friday night, but am scheduling this post for Monday because I know most people aren't huge nerds like me who enjoy working on a Friday night) and I felt so invigorated that I had to share this experience with you. 

Finally, instead of staring at that blank screen I have a process that doesn't make me feel overwhelmed!

And most importantly - it's a process that killed my procrastination. I'm now unnaturally excited to plan all my speeches for the entire fall season and will probably have them all ready to go in the next two weeks. 

As I wrote my speech ideas onto notecards and categorized them on my living room floor I couldn't help but remember the wisdom of my 9th grade teacher who taught us how to write a research paper by breaking it up into small parts:

(i.e. writing each quote on a notecard, organizing the notecards in categories, and then ordering the notecards into a cohesive order; then all we had to do was go notecard by notecard and fill in the gaps with our writing). 

It reminded me that studying and tackling big projects in college requires purposeful process planning (omg is anyone else as excited as I am about this unplanned alliteration?).

Effective studying is not staring at a book. Writing a good essay is not staring at a blank screen. We procrastinate to avoid that awful feeling of not knowing how to start or what to do next. 

So the next time you get a homework assignment, I've already got your first step covered: develop a process.

For example:

1) Look at your assignment and create a list of small things you need to do in order to complete it. Each step shouldn't take you any longer than one hour. Keep the steps short and simple. 

2) Make sure each item begins with some kind of action verb.

3) Be creative. The best studying is down-and-dirty. Use your hands, use old-school tools like paper, scissors and markers, make notecards, spread your work all around the floor, plan discussions with friends, write on white boards, create animations, make up games. 

4) Go through your list and check off each thing as you complete it so that the next time you sit down to do your homework you only have to look at the next thing to be completed; don't overwhelm yourself by looking at it all. Just focus on one thing at a time.

Breaking down your work into smaller parts and developing a process that works for you is actually invigorating and kind of fun. Seriously. I'm not just a total nerd talking, I swear (oops...I already revealed I was doing work on a Friday night...but it really was fun. And I have lots of cool-awesome-epic (is saying "epic" still a thing?) non-work-related activities planned for Saturday ;)). 

We procrastinate because we're trying to avoid the feeling of incompetence. When you develop a process for your work you'll instantly feel more competent and confident, and you'll be armed with the skills to tackle your project ahead of time. 

For more reading on the best college study skills and processes check out my fav study skill book Cal Newport's How to Become a Straight-A Student.