It is a human tendency to procrastinate. At some point, we’ve all likely delayed or avoided doing something we knew we should do.
But why do we procrastinate? I believe there are two key factors – FEAR and the DESIRE FOR IMMEDIATE GRATIFICATION.
In this blog, I’m going to talk about how FEAR drives us to procrastinate and how to effectively deal with and move past it. And then in the next blog, I’ll talk about how our desire for immediate gratification causes us to procrastinate.
So how does fear cause us to procrastinate? Well, whether we know it or not, our mind often believes something bad could happen as a result of us taking some sort of action and so often times we choose not to take that action as a way of protecting ourselves.
A personal story comes to mind…
Back when I was the Director of Strategic Insights at Johnsonville Sausage, one of the things I needed to do was create a vision for our department.
Naturally, I engaged the team, had several discussions, sat through multiple work sessions, and then collectively created a vision for the department – including what we needed to make the vision a reality.
The next step was for me, as the team leader, to share our vision and the action steps with Sr. Leadership and gain their alignment.
I put my presentation together and was ready to share it. Then came the procrastinating. I moved the meeting date out at least 3 times. Eventually, we had the meeting and received great feedback from Sr. Leadership, made some refinements to our vision and plan, moved on.
But what I didn’t realize at that time, and therefore didn’t deal with properly, was that I was in fact procrastinating. And I was procrastinating out of FEAR of Sr. Leadership. I was afraid they:
- Wouldn’t agree with the vision, reject it, and by default reject me
- Would think I didn’t know what I was talking about
- Would regret hiring me for the role
- Would think I was an ineffective leader
So, because of all of these fears, I was avoiding having the meeting – I didn’t want any of these fears to come to fruition.
If I had stopped and effectively dealt with my procrastination, I would have uncovered these fears and been in a position to work through them. But how? How do you address the FEAR factor and move past it?
The first thing I would have asked myself is – What is the worst thing that could happen if they don’t like the vision and plan? And a lot of crazy things would have ran through my mind like, they’ll fire me, they won’t trust me, they won’t take me seriously going forward, and so on and so on…
But the real truth of it was, our team did the work and we had strong rationale for what we put forward. If Sr. Leadership wouldn’t have agreed, it would have been a learning opportunity for our entire team. We would have made the appropriate revisions and moved forward.
So, had I worked through this, I would have seen that my fears were unfounded, and I was missing an opportunity to learn from the Sr. Leadership team.
So the next time you’re procrastinating, take a step back and ask yourself if the FEAR factor is in play for you, might you be afraid of:
- Making a mistake
- Losing the respect of something or someone
- Being rejected or embarrassed
- Making a bad decision
- Looking desperate
- Missing something important
- Not know enough
And if the FEAR factor is there, think about:
- What’s the worst thing that could happen and how likely is that to happen. Sometimes we get ourselves all worked up and make the situation worse than it really is in our own mind
- Whether or not the fear is real and how likely it is to come true. Then if it’s real and has a chance of coming true ask yourself – “What am I willing to risk?” and “What other options are available to me?”
Working through the FEAR factor can be extremely challenging. But at the end of the day, there really are only two choices:
- Working through them and move forward OR
- Not and continue letting your fears hold you back from what you want to do.
If procrastination is an issue for you and you’re interested in getting some help, please reach out to me at tracy@clearpathcoachingco.com and we’ll get a conversation started.