6 Anti Procrastination Hacks

Procrastination is a really nasty phenomenon: You want or need to do something, but you … just don’t. Many clever observations have been made about procrastination. Also, many standard procedures for overcoming procrastination have been devised. Sometimes, it is even possible to use procrastination to your advantage in a clever way. In fact, there’s a formula for procrastination, and methods which use the insights from the formula to beat procrastination.

But let’s be honest: All that won’t completely defeat procrastination, as it’s a problem deeply rooted in the human psyche. So, what do you do after you have made a detailed plan, set a deadline, a time when to begin, and have broken your task into small concrete next steps, but still face real procrastination? Then it’s time to use some tricks!

I’ve collected 6 anti procrastination hacks that turned out to be effective at some point in my life. In the following, I will assume that you know what you want to do, and have good reasons for doing it as soon as possible. So, forget all the possible pros of procrastination, and defeat it directly!

Hack #1: Listening To Music

Are you in a good mood when you want to tackle a dreaded task, but fail due to procrastination? I think not. Procrastination is a problem that is related with mood. Thinking about the thing you really really need to do can crush your good mood in an instant. And in a bad mood you prefer doing anything else but getting your chores done. So, why not lift up your mood to make it easier to break through the wall of emotional aversion?

I’m not sure why it works, but listening to good music makes me happier and lets me start tasks more easily. And while I’m on the run, listening to music makes it easier to keep going. I always listen to music when doing boring chores like vacuuming my room. Even when I’m writing, I often have some music running in the background.

Isn’t this method distracting? Well, actually it’s a little bit distracting, but it’s a relatively benign form of distraction. It’s very much preferable compared to distracting thoughts like “But I really don’t like to do this now. I’ll rather be doing something else.” Enjoying good music is much better than letting your own negative thoughts speak up to you, if you really want to get things done.

Does it matter what kind of music you listen to? Well, the more you like the music that runs in the background, the better! Engaging songs like Harder, better, faster, stronger by Daft Punk are especially effective. Whenever I listened to that song while doing homework, it was much easier to go on, and to finish it.

Even if this hack won’t beat your procrastination, it will weaken it! For achieving a real victory you might need to use more effective tools, like the following.

Hack #2: Do It Awkwardly!

Often, procrastination is a result of perfectionism, or too high standards. You might think “If I can’t do it right, it’s better not to start doing it at all.” That’s a totally self-defeating attitude, as it stops you from starting in the first place. And how do you want to do something really well, if you don’t even do some easy training? Just try it: quantity trumps quality! Don’t care about the results. Just do it!

If you can get away with it: Do your task in the most awkward way you can imagine. Reverse your quality standards and tell yourself: If it’s not horrible it isn’t worth the effort. That method is especially suited in situation where you want to write something, but don’t know how to start. It’s really great to do a completely awkward sketch in the beginning to get into the right mood for writing.

It’s even possible that your first horrible sketch actually is better than you had expected, and you can use some ideas, or parts of that sketch for the real thing. When you need to do something else where you can’t do a first awkward trial, just try doing your chore in a very lazy and sloppy fashion. Done is done! The world won’t blow up, because you said goodbye to thoroughness when doing some minor annoying task.

Hack #3: How Fast Can I Do It?

Don’t feel bored or annoyed to death by repetitive tasks, but turn them into a game! Here’s one way how that can be done: Guess how long it will take you to finish the task at hand, and try to be faster! Yes, it’s really simple, but really energizing. How fast can you check your mail? How long to you take for a shower? How quickly can you solve a problem?

Remember: Expecting perfect results just creates more procrastination, so don’t expect to do your chores in a great way with this method. The last areas where you need perfection are your everyday tasks, so finish them as quickly as possible, so that you can focus on the really important stuff. And while you’re at it, you can also have some fun playing that little game.

If you want even more fun, you can enter your times for your “favorite” time-consuming activities into a spreadsheet, and plot the data as diagram.Yeah, doing that takes some time, but it’s fun; and fun makes your life run smoothly.

Hack #4: Why Is It Great To Do That?

Great? How can it be great to do the important, but annoying tasks you are procrastinating? Well, find something! Any interesting aspect of that activity that might make it worthwhile. For example, I love coming up with crazy ideas when I’m writing, so that’s something I can look forward to. I often need to remind myself that writing actually is a really great activity, and nothing to be terribly afraid of.

Turn your tasks into quests, missions, adventures, or experiments. Be creative! What will happen, if you try to do them? Well, to find out about that, you need to actually do them. Do them with style. Find a way to get fun out of them. Be a bit crazy, and everything quickly becomes much easier.

Find anything that you like about your missions and concentrate on those aspects. That way, you will be able to level up quickly and joyfully; and get more things done with more fun.

Hack #5: Worst Case Visualization

Now, we are getting to the really heavy weapons for the war against procrastination. Where positive thinking fails, negative thinking might save you. This hack is for real challenges. Imagine you will fail in an unrealistically bad fashion. If it feels like torture to get out of bed, just imagine that you will stand up so miserably that you stumble over your own feet, and break an arm, or a leg, or both.

With that horrible but unrealistic picture in mind, try to disprove it. Yes, you can stand up without breaking any bones. And even if the worst case happened, you would still survive most probably. You might even go further and imagine that you will really die. But that’s so unlikely, that it’s completely ridiculous. So, prove to yourself, and the rest of the world, that you can master your challenges – and still be fine afterwards.

In fact, I used this technique to start going to a Taekwondo course. I imagined that I would get terribly hurt, and that I’ll fail miserably. Of course, that didn’t happen, but I had to go there to find out. In the end, I haven’t stayed in that course for a long time, because I got sick for a week and somehow lost interest afterwards, but I’m glad that I could overcome my hesitation to try that sport.

Hack #6: The Suffering Prediction Game

This hack is for those chores that feel like they drain all your energy out of your soul. Just estimate how terrible they will really be, if you actually do them.

Ok, have you done that? Good. Now, you have a problem: You cannot find out whether your estimation was realistic or not, without really doing your chore. And that’s why you will do it!

Sometimes I use this to get out of bed, if I feel exceedingly tired and unmotivated. Surprisingly, I always overestimate how bad it will be to get out of bed and to face the challenges of the day. I also overestimate how much I will suffer when doing exercises, or try writing a difficult passage. And that’s a fairly typical phenomenon when procrastinating an activity: It’s badness is vastly and systematically overestimated.

It rather looks like few things are worse than us imagining how bad things will be. Granted, sometimes things will turn out really badly, but those exceptions can be handled, too. Often it’s easier to deal with a difficult situation than defeating your habit of procrastination.

Feedback Please!

Have you had success with these hacks or similar ones? How do you beat procrastination?