We enjoy coding. Scratch that, we LOVE coding. But our life sometimes gets in the middle. Kids, your spouse, your work, a flat tire, some friend needing help, family… But the most common obstacle it is you. And today we are going to learn some tips about fighting procrastination.
Why do we procrastinate?
A lot was written about procrastination and why we do it (here is a good article, for example), but most of the time what I have found is that we have negative emotions towards what we should be doing.
Fear of failure, laziness, self sabotage, lack of motivation, we feel discouraged…even anxiety. And more.
People have one reason to procrastinate or even more than just one. It falls to the terrain of psychology to solve it. There is no silver bullet that will help every person.
For example, I procrastinate a lot. I like to code but after working, I want to relax. I like to read, play videogames, talk with friends, listen to music. Also, on early stages of learning, following tutorials tire me a bit.
And of course, there is that voice telling me “You can leave it to tomorrow”.
Fighting procrastination: Solutions
When it is time to plan how I will spend my time, I’m good at it. I am so good, that I have a lot of spare time. And sometimes I’ll use the spare time before working in what I should be doing. Or I would just do that. Sounds familiar?
“Today I have to spend 1 hour on A and 1 hour on B. I can do it right now, but I’m tired. I can do it at night!”. But when the night comes, we are tired again and we’ll just do it tomorrow, along our other tasks.
Technique 1: Set fixed hours to do your tasks
As you saw, if you see your spare time as Tetris pieces you can move around, you’ll end taking some of them out. And it won’t be your recreational time.
Instead, pick a time to do it. Not “after dinner”, not “sometime in the afternoon…I guess”. Check your schedule and a fixed hour do it. Nothing (unless a emergency) will change it. Not “I’m tired” or “I’ll do it after, no sweat”.
18:00 is your time to do Task 1, and 19:00 is your time to do Task 2. Period.
No “clever” planning, no excuses, no nothing. Pick a time to do it and it is set in stone.
And repetition brings consistency. You don’t mess around about when you’ll go to work, you just do it. Here’s the same. Don’t think, just follow the same pattern and you’ll be doing it without thinking.
You can even download a calendar app to your phone, set alarms, etc.
Technique 2: Don’t bit more that you can chew
I was a bit of a “trigger happy” when planning my daily schedule initially. If I plan accordingly, I can do a lot. 5 hours on the afternoon can turn into 5 1-hour sessions of 5 different topics.
You can easily imagine how much that lasted. Not even a week.
If you have a work, family or a lot of daily obligations, don’t use too much of your time (initially). One or two
One or two hours daily is more than 6 hours a day, one or two days. And if you like what you do, you will even extend that 1-hour seasons into longer ones.
If you are concerned that you are not progressing enough or you want/need to add more stuff, add another ‘1-hour’ block of a third topic into your schedule, but no more than 1 block each two weeks.
Two weeks are enough to adapt your routine and see if you are comfortable. If you are not, reduce them.
As I told you, 1 hour daily each day of the year is more than 4 hours daily for a month.
Technique 3: Track your progress
One bad thing of learning is that the reward of learning is a long-term thing. You won’t see the fruit of learning this month, or maybe not this year.
And sometimes we feel like we are running at the same spot endlessly.
One thing we can do, to give us a sense of progress are tracking your progress.
You can do it on a piece of paper, on an excel file, on an app. But I’ll give you a better idea: Crossing out index cards.
You can easily buy them online, at your bookstore, etc. Get the bigger ones you can do, a ruler and a pen.
Each week has 7 days. Divide the index card in 7 columns. Then do 7 rows. We have 49 days. The 50th is crossing out the whole card.
Repeat it with the other side of the index card. You have a card with two sides of 50 days to cross out.
Use one for each topic you want to do. If you want, leave a bit of space on the top to write what’s tracking. For example “Learning C++” and “Going to the gym”.
If you do that task, cross that day off with a permanent maker. If you don’t, write why you didn’t and how do you feel.
Believe, after the first one, you don’t want to fill a second empty cell. Also, crossing out cells is cool.
I also read that some people like to keep index card full crossed as “prize”. And other people just burn them. To each their own, I guess.
Summary
No. We haven’t solved procrastination in 10 minutes with less than 2€.
For that, we need time.
Remember, track your progress with index cards, set a time for each task daily and don’t overdo-it.
It is easier than it sounds.
And if you need extra motivation, remember the best video about it:
