When I was in my early twenties I read a book that would profoundly change my outlook on learning and happiness. It would also change my attitude toward procrastination.
The book was Flow: The Psychology of Happiness. The author, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, studied literally thousands of people to find out the guiding principles for happiness. Part of this study also looked at the differences between people who are fully engaged in activities versus those who are not engaged (and may well be procrastinating!).
Some of the following guidance is shaped by this book, and some is from my own experience.
What ‘Flow’ Taught Me
When I first read the book I realised the characteristics of ‘peak experiences’. Peak experiences are the times when we feel most energised, fulfilled and alive. Csikszentmihalyi calls these ‘flow’ experiences.
One of the best ways to avoid procrastination is to create the conditions for these experiences, in order to avoid boredom and overwhelm.
To create flow, we need to find a balance between the challenge involved in the task and the skill level we bring to the task.
When our skill level is up to the task (and sufficiently stretched by the task for it to be a meaningful challenge), we feel energised.
As our skill level increases, we can increase the complexity of the task. But we still need to be mindful of keeping a good balance between the task and our skill.
When these things are in balance, we can stay in the flow channel.
#1. Balance The Match Between Challenge & Your Skill In Any Task
If you want to learn a new talent, start by picking a task that matches your current skill level.
For example, if you want to draw, start by drawing a stick figure. When you’ve drawn a hundred of those, take on something more challenging.
When we repeat an action our skill level becomes better. It’s impossible to avoid. Fortunately, no one I know has become worse at something by doing it more!
Where many people come unstuck is that they select tasks that are well beyond their current range of skill.
It’s little wonder they feel deflated. And when we feel like that….guess what, we want to avoid that negative feeling. So often we procrastinate.
We substitute the pain of not being able to achieve the task, with the short term pleasure of a procrastination activity (like watching TV).
But, if we follow the rules of Flow, we would instead select tasks that are a better match with our skill level. This gives us the best chance to see our skill grow.
This is exactly the feedback loop that is needed for skill development to be enjoyable.
I find the the ideal for me is to select tasks that are within a 15% stretch for my skill level. Any more and I’m feeding that Procrastination Gremlin. And that Gremlin sure is hungry! Best we don’t feed it.
#2. Manage Overwhelm by Breaking Down the Activity
It’s easy to become overwhelmed by large goals.
Often these goals are the ones that are most meaningful to us, which is exactly why they’re worth accomplishing.
Instead of being overwhelmed by the magnitude of a large goal, we can simplify the goal by breaking it down into smaller steps.
If passing an exam feels too big, start by reading and summarising the first chapter of your study book. If getting a new job feels like hard work, start by creating a list of the 5 companies you would like to work for.
When we break down a larger goal into small tasks, we realise there are some smaller actions we can do to get started, right now.
#3. Separate Action & Thinking About ‘What If’
There are times to think about the future, and then there are times to just get on with it.
You’ll notice items #1 and #2 above relate to selecting the best tasks to work on. We select the right tasks by either matching the tasks with our skill or breaking down the tasks into bite size chunks.
When we’ve chosen the tasks, it’s time to focus 100% of our energy on them.
Often we start a task and then our mind wanders. We start to think about the ‘what ifs’…what if we don’t get this task done, what if we don’t succeed with the larger goal, and so on.
When we think about the ‘what ifs’ we disrupt the task we’re doing. And of course if we can’t complete the task, it’s hard to hope to achieve the larger goal.
Procrastination occurs when the small tasks we could do today, become blended with the fear of not achieving the larger goal. This creates worry and destroys our focus. Our destroyed focus affects our ability to accomplish the task. It’s a vicious cycle.
With mindfulness we can train ourselves to separate the activities.
When we’re doing a task, ideally we would dedicate all our energy to completing it. This might mean taking a block of time where we avoid distraction entirely (no facebook, no SMS, just doing) until the task is finished. When we have knocked off a few tasks, then we can provide permission to our mind to think about the ‘what ifs’.
It takes practice to train the mind to function like this. Train it to focus. Then train it to explore. The more we practise at separating these activities, the better the mind gets at doing them.
