Thanks, Procrastination!

Hello hello! Khayra coming at you from the latest procrastination hole.
And yet, I’m in a great mood 💕 Why in the world would I looooove procrastinating? Especially when I’ve been putting off the following:

• 20 minutes of looking at the wall instead of driving on Madinah Road
• 2 months of putting off writing this very article to “next week”
• 9 months from the time I set up khayrab.com to my first on-purpose social media post

I don’t feel bad about these critical actions I dismissed for long. I don’t consistently berate myself or blame anyone or anything for not doing these important things, because it is a gift. I’m human, so yes I do do these things for an hour, maybe a day, but once processed, I don’t look back.

When I notice I’m not doing a task, I say “oh, I guess I don’t want to do it”. The difference between my next step and what my new clients do are very different.

I’ve been recording my moments of procrastination for the past nine years. That is every time I procrastinated for more than 15 minutes. This is insane, and I wouldn’t recommend starting this way. It came of necessity when I was diagnosed with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) when I was 10 years old (1997). This self-research paid off when I got my MBA and became self-employed.

Here is everything I learned about procrastination:

tl;dr: Procrastination is your wise body taking energy and time you didn’t provide to it.

About Procrastination

What it looks like

Let’s practically define what procrastination can look like when it comes up. Keep in mind these are themes, and can physically look super different in each experience.

Leaving the present & instant gratification

This is the most obvious and most shared form of putting things off. Anything that relieves pain and increases pleasure instantly fits here like binging shows, scrolling on social media, posting something you know will get likes, taking a nap, or working on something you feel you’ll handle better. The commonality in all of these is running away from the pressure of a goal and getting instant (usually illusionary) relief.

In my clients, this usually shows up as panic. Common survival reactions include fight (self-criticism), flight (Netflix), or freezing (naps). Learn more about panic here.

Choosing comfort over growth

This can be harder to label because it isn’t discussed much. We think comfort automatically equals happy cozy situations, but the human mind is programmed in mysterious ways. Your comfot zone may be stress! Yes! It may be struggle. It may be drama. It may be victimhood. Your comfort zone may even be failure.

The comfort zone is anything that you have grown used to. Change is so difficult and growth is the most intense change you can experience, because it changes our sense of identity. Here are comfort zones I chose to stay in from my procrastination:

Why it shows up

These are listed in the order of what I find in my clients’ procrastination.

You dismissed your needs

When you don’t give your body what it needs, it takes it on its own.

The brain is a part of your body, and it requires rest and to be left to its preferences. If your psyche enjoys playing, consuming, creativity, and you have decided to ignore its needs, it will find very creative ways to play around and consume.

Your goal is too scary (in your perception)

Your mind only processes your perception of reality.

Your perception has been programmed. What in the human physical organic body benefits from how many followers you have on social media? What in the human psyche benefits from those followers in the long-term? We all know that unless we’re making money off of our followers by selling them products or companies ad space, there is no benefit.

AND YET, we chase it because we perceive followership as attention (which can be confused with love) and engagement (which can be confused with acceptance). That’s our perception.

Likewise, it is your perception that can equate cleaning the kitchen or submitting an application with a zombie apocalypse.

Your plan doesn’t fit in reality

People who procrastinate find it difficult to quickly shift gears, so when surprises happen, we procrastinate harder and for longer.

My dearest fellow procrastinator, I love you dearly, because we share the ability to overthink or overfeel, or both! And because we do this, we hold on so tightly to our expectations and plans even when we have ample evidence that they are not realistic. I covered the internal version of this surprise in the self-comparison article, and now we reveal what happens with external surprises.

If you’re avoiding something because “it will only take a day”, you and I both know how painful it is when you get to the day and are shocked that all the factors that would make it “a day” aren’t even there. You didn’t keep that research you thought. That family member needs you right now. Your favorite team is about to play their biggest game. You know this. I know this… And yet we get shocked.

How to Navigate Procrastination

Generally

Don’t judge it, observe it: Judging and beating self up leads to more fear and EITHER more avoidance OR messy efforts that you’ll have to redo. Observation and reflection to my clients feel like non-action which feels wrong to someone with an unhealthy relationship to their goals. I promise you, bubu, there is gold at the end of this uncomfortable rainbow.

Here are the patterns you’ll find depending on how long you’ll observe it, based on 9 years of my procrastination observations:

• A Couple of Days: Your procrastination’s relationship with food, sleep, and mood
• A Week: Your procrastination’s relationship with stress
• A Month: Your procrastination’s relationship with a big goal. This includes finding out about the big goal, the due date approaching, and how you exist past the (probably ignored) deadline.
• A Year: How life/focus changes, like shifting from study to work or marriage to parenthood, affects your procrastination.
• Multiple Years: Larger life changes like existential crises, grief in a loved one’s passing or divorce, or changes in income flow definitely take effect over a larger timespan. For me, for unknown reasons, I have intense panic, procrastination, and compulsive manipulative productivity in July. I graduated from traditional study life in 2012, I have no idea why July.

Take care of it right now

This is the face I’ll give you if you tell me you’re waiting 9 years to get things done because you’d rather observe your procrastination after reading this article: 😑

If you have only a day until due date: Let go of urgency

This is the weirdest thing I advise and I get so much resistance from my clients, but it WORKS. Let go of urgency. WHAT? Yes. We’re going to mindfully procrastinate. If your body has been begging you for ease and other needs, I highly recommend you apply to Pomodoro Technique to get you through a tough task.

Pomodoro Technique

1. Set ONE task (blog post, assignment, report, etc.)
2. Work on it for 25 whole minutes. Work on it imperfectly, with errors, with uncertainty. Your focus for ONLY 25 MINUTES is to work on only this one thing.
3. Take a 5 minute break. A real break. Close your eyes, dance, walk, reach out to a loved one. Reenergize yourself.
4. Do Steps 2 and 3
5. Do Steps 2 and 3
6. Work on it for ONLY 25 MINUTES
7. Take a 20 minute break. A real break. Never shorten your chosen break time.

That’s a full cycle with my twist of self-compassion. And that whole cycle is only 2 hours and 25 mintues. You can do as many as needed. Here’s the official Pomodoro Timer.

There’s also very cool rooms on places like Clubhouse and fun YouTube videos so you’re not alone during the process.

If you have two weeks until due date: Schedule in mindful procrastination

Overscheduling is a sure way to end up procrastinating. Just mathematically, by setting up more goals, you’ll end up avoiding more goals, right? So get ahead and set up time made to procrastinate around things you dread, on purpose, so you don’t need to beat yourself up after, or underschedule by delegating or prioritizing. Book an intro call with me if you’re ready to take prioritization to the next level.

If you have two weeks until due date: Let go of fear/shame

Fear and shame usually have roots in underlying unconscious beliefs that are the base of many reactions. Self-inquiry, or what I like to call self-research, is important to unearth these quietly impactful barriers. There are so many awesome coaches and teachers that can support this effort, but I lean towards Byron Katie’s Four Questions which I outline here.

You won’t let go of it on your own without a coach/program/therapist in just two weeks! If you do, hit me up, I need to learn from you. However, simply exploring it while applying the above two techniques will give you so much more mental space to do what you need to do.

If you have a month until due date: Figure out your needs and values and work accordingly

Why you may be dismissing your needs

• Society — There are “normal needs” like food, shelter, community, and you may find yourself with “weird needs” like quiet time, bungee jumping, or painting murals around your house. I use quotes because there is no such thing as “normal”. We lived through a pandemic and 2 recessions in the past 15 years, we can all agree that the status quo is barely holding on. However, the normalcy you hold as a benchmark might be informing you to let go of what’s actually important to you.
• Values — Our family of origins, be it our parents themselves or the dynamics we grew up in, informed our values such as intense work or being cool and liked. Wherever you are on the spectrum, DNA and upbringing don’t accurately reflect your needs. Therefore, you may be applying a blueprint you grew up with to a personality/body that simply requires a different way of doing things.
• Random Programming — This is the age of globalization and the Internet. There is no telling what advertisement, TV episode, YouTube video, or book you consumed that planted a seed of programming in your mind. Who knows when or where it happened, and no one needs to care. The most important thing is being able to recognize it doesn’t serve you and choosing your need above it.

Once you know your limitations and needs, you can then ask for help or prepare yourself to work in the way that highlights your strengths and forgives your weaknesses. I covered this a lot in this article about why it’s hard to ask for help.

If you have longer: Align your goals with your values

For all clients who feel overwhelmed by their goals, we create a priority list together. An up-level to that is this workbook to figure out values and get even clearer about the goals that fit in their value system. I will later publish an article on this, in the meantime, we can always have an Intro Call.

Important notes

• THERE IS NO WRONG FIRST STEP — Took one forward and two back? Congrats, you’re dancing :) Be sure to learn from it and practice.
• Doing less doesn’t mean you’re stressing less — If you read this far, you are probably an overthinker. As such, no amount of underscheduling will make up for the hectic reality of your mind. Once you know this, you can find mindfulness techniques to bring you back to the present reality.
• Your needs and values are defined by YOU — What I found in all my overwhelmed clients is most of their scariest goals are self-inflicted. No one told them to struggle with it, they have lots of people who want to help, and yet they are stuck in their old ways of dismissing their own needs.
• Having value-based goals gives more room for living — Because you’ll work mindfully, you’ll be able to rest mindfully. This miraculous combo allows you to actually recharge instead of mindlessly running away from things (that end up coming back later anyway).

Originally published at https://www.khayrab.com on May 11, 2021.