Are you one of those people who has a lot of good intentions but never seems to get around to doing anything? If so, you may be struggling with procrastination. Procrastination is the act of delaying or postponing something that needs to be done.

It can be tempting to put things off, procrastination can actually have some pretty negative consequences.

• Firstly, decreased productivity
• Secondly, lower quality work
• Thirdly, stress and anxiety

So how can you overcome procrastination and start getting things done? Check out these tips!

In this weeks I hate numbers. I am going to be talking about what procrastination is, how it manifests itself, the signs, the symptoms we can recognize, and more importantly, what we can do to improve procrastination so that it moves our business dial forward. Procrastination is a huge issue for many people because it keeps them from achieving their goals. It’s important to understand what procrastination is and how it affects us so that we can take steps to reduce its impact on our lives and businesses.

Conclusion

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Never put off tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow as well. So said Mark Twain when describing something that most of us have succumbed to at some point. Procrastination. Procrastination is where we act against our better judgement. We do things that aren't in our long term interest and those are things that we have actually consciously sought to try and achieve. In this week's podcast episode on I Hate Numbers, I'm going to be talking about what procrastination is, how it manifests itself, the signs, the symptoms we can recognise, and more importantly, what we can do to improve procrastination and reduce it so that it moves our business style forward.

You're listening to the I Hate Numbers podcast with Mahmood Reza. The I Hate Numbers Podcast mission is to help your business survive and thrive by you better understanding and connecting with your numbers. Number love and care is what it's about. Tune in every week. Now, here's your host, Mahmood Reza.

Hi, folks. My name is Mahmood. I'm an accountant, educator and proud author of the book I Hate Numbers. And in this week's podcast, we're going to explore those topics that increase your financial awareness, makes you connect more with your numbers in your business and helps you save time, make money. What's not to love about that? Let's crack on with the podcast. Procrastination. I said earlier on, it's about where we act contrary to our better judgement.

So visualise that situation where you've got a bad case of toothache. You know that you've got to go to the dentist. The dentist is what's in your interest. However, we delay, we procrastinate, we delay that. Imagine that situation where you're studying for an exam, whether it's a high school, university, professional exams or whatever. What's going on is that you come up with a whole host of what I call dispatching activities. You would rather go off and clean the house, you'd rather talk to people you may not even like. You do all those rubbish chores and those things that actually stop you from studying.

But we know that studying effectively, passing those exams, doing well has a future reward, a future benefit. Some other different ways in which we can recognise and see how procrastination develops itself. Do you recognise any of these? You say you're far too busy, you're far too busy to put into action to do those things that you know are for your long term future, your long term prosperity, your long term well being.

You may be somebody who also says, actually, I'm not going to release this new product, I'm not going to release this service because I want it to be perfect. It's not quite there as it should be, so I'm going to hold back and I'm going to end up doing things until they are perfectly formed. We're delaying nevertheless. The third characteristic common amongst most procrastinators and I would come myself amongst this here is what I call the shiny bauble syndrome. You never finish one particular project, something else grabs your fancy. You think, this is more exciting, it's got more value in there.

What tends to happen is you tend to have a whole bundle of products, projects, services you're working on that aren’t quite complete. One more thing to be done, you get distracted quite easily and we see that quite often in our personal lives as well as our business lives. If something grabs our fancy, we pursue that and what we end up with is a whole medley of incomplete tasks. Do any of those actually fit you? Have you recognised any of those? Now, having said that, let's actually talk more about why procrastination occurs. And it's a natural human phenomenon, by the way, folks. So it happens over the century. So it's not something that's particular of the age that we live in now, but it's something that has behest mankind, the humans, for quite a long time.

What we have, as psychologists call it, we have a conflict between the want and the should. You've decided that you want to have a healthier lifestyle, you want to either lose a few pills, you want to improve your blood pressure, you want to get your cholesterol level down and therefore, you know, that's got long term benefits, long term prospects and that's what you should be doing. Your diet, your exercise, where you conduct yourself should be geared towards cheating that odd lifestyle.

However, you peer through the glass window of a bakery, you spot that lovely slice of chocolate cake and that's what you want. You should be studying for your exams, that's what you should be doing. However, the desire to go and watch TV, watch cat videos, serve these social media platforms that you have is too strong. So we always have that conflict between the want and the should. The want is more instant gratification, that little adrenaline rush that goes through us. There's release of those endorphins. It makes us feel really good. The should is obviously acting in contradiction and as human beings we tend to gravitate towards things that give us that immediate gratification and those rewards that are too far away for us to consider tangible are things that we don't immediately focus on.

So that's the constant battle we have the want versus the should. You come home of an evening, you've got to set yourself up to do some work in terms of on your business. You might be somebody who should be going to the gym, but what you want to do is just slob out, slouch and getting into something that seems much more enjoyable. So folks, don't give yourself too much of a hard time. That constant battle between the want and the should is ever present.

Now, having looked at what procrastination actually is, how it manifests itself and dived a little bit into the theory about why it occurs, what is it we can do to actually try and reduce the level of procrastination. Because, let's face it folks, procrastination is a drain with your time and energy. It does create or certainly increase the level of anxiety you have to have that depleted feeling. When we do that once, typically what happens is there's a level of guilt, there's a level of negative feelings that follows. Engage in a particular course of action while eating a slice of chocolate cake, watching TV. We know the tasks are still there, they still need to be moved forward.

Think about the things, the initiatives that you thought of in your own business when you were actually distracted by perhaps spending too much time on social media, too much time on things that don't really move your business style. Those tasks that have got to be done are still there to be completed and until they're completed, it's very difficult for you to get your Northern Star future advance forward in your business. So what is it we can actually do? Well, there's two or three things that immediately comes up that we can do.

One of them is to set yourself what I call short term but measurable milestones that you can measure your progress against. So for over 25 years, I told professional students, the accountants of tomorrow, about how to pass their exams to get through and achieve their qualifications. One of the things I would often talk to them about would be a study programme and how to best progress and proceed with that. Many students would either do intense bursts of activity several hours at a time. They'd always set themselves ambitious targets about how much time they would spend. Remember, we're competing here at a professional level with having to work and study and typically contribute to running a household as well.

Those are difficult things to combine. Now, for me, it's not about how much time you spend, but it's actually doing things in short sprints, focused activity. So that would start off by ten minute, just learning to sit down, getting your books out and do something practical like whether it was a question that you work through and altering it blind, do the 10-15 minutes burst, stopping, relaxing, and that's the end of your stint for the evening. You can actually build that up. But what you've got, you've got something that gives you an immediate outcome, you've got a sense of accomplishment and that's that short term benefit which will lead you towards that long term reward.

Likewise, in your business, you can do things like you focus on one task at a time. If you've got lots of different projects going on, if you're somebody who gets easily distracted, well, the key thing is that you need to do is to focus, finish one thing at a time. By all means, make a note of those different projects, those different new ideas that you come across. Mark them, bookmark them, do them later. Over the time being, complete what's already in your in-tray. If you're a perfectionist well, the idea is, put yourself in the shoes of your customer, your audience.

They may not be seeking the level of perfection that you think they do, so don't over engineer. As long as it meets a minimum viable proposition, a minimum viable product, get it out there, test, get feedback, but you must take action. Imperfect action always trumps perfect inaction. If you're somebody who says they're far too busy, well, there's a paradox here. Busy people accomplish lots of things. So it may be that actually you were delaying something and there may be some issues, there may be some challenges that you've got to face. So reflect, think, why is it you all putting that off? Is it something that perhaps doesn't give you joy? Is it something perhaps that you don't think you've got the skills and the confidence for?

Are you time poor? Well, there are ways to get around that. So effectively focus on those things that you're good at. Can you bring in that time and energy? Can you bring in that resource based on outside? Can you do things like what I call eat the frog? So there's a task that you must do that you don't find particularly pleasant. Reframe how you look at these things and thinking that every step that you take along your path is a step forward to your Northern star.

So look at it as a positive thing, don't look at it as a drudgery thing. So if you look at things in negative terms, if you look at things that they are a chore, they will become that. So reframe your thinking, reframe the way you look at it. And also indulge in what's called eat the frog exercises. Now, I'm not talking about actually eating frogs, when I used to eat them they weren’t quite pleasant. But I'm talking about is something that is particularly unpleasant, some of the tasks you truly don't enjoy. Reframing the way you look at that. Do it first thing in the morning, get it out of the way. You've got that accomplished and you will feel really positive and you feel really good about that.

The last thing I'm going to talk about in this podcast is something called temptation bundling. Temptation bundling, I'll be expanding in much more detail next week, but let me give you a flavour of what temptation bundling actually is. Now, it was discovered by Professor Kathryn Milkman. What she appeared was when she got home from work, from a day at the university, she was very tired. All she wanted to do was to slouch, to slob out on the sofa. But she knew that she liked the gym where she should be going there. It was good for her, but she didn't have the energy to actually do that. What she wanted to do also, she had those competing pressures between watching TV - her particular favourites at the time were h... But she knew she had to get on with work for the university.

So what she thought she would do, she had a great light bulb moment and actually paired the two. She thought what would happen if I paired an indulgence, something I enjoyed doing, which was listening to The Hunger Game and actually going to the gym. So what you had, you had a short term benefit indulgence paired with something that was going to bring long term rewards for her and marrying it up in that way, she found that when she went there, her attendance at the gym increased.

She actually felt more positive about it. She actually restricted herself by night, folks just to listening and watching The Hunger Games while she was at the gym. So that indulgence moment was actually savoured. She didn't carry out a small survey bike amongst our children 26 students and she found there was a correlation between pairing up an indulgence with what you wanted to achieve, which gave you long term benefits, long term rewards. Have a think to yourself, other indulgences. So whether it's that cup of coffee that you have, you treat yourself when you've done a piece of work, that piece of work is something that's going to take you to your northern Star.

So folks, let's wrap up what we've learned, what we've achieved on this podcast. So we have this idea of procrastination is not an unnatural phenomenon. So don't beat yourself up over it. Don't give yourself too much for a hard time. In fact, you're listening to podcasts. You want to do something about that, take a step forward. We know procrastination manifests itself in different ways from feeling too busy, too overwrought, all these things to be done perfectly and the shiny ball syndrome which you get distracted by something else, something else takes your fancy, but you never get things done.

We know we have a conflict between the want and the should syndrome, something that gives us instant gratification. Typically we might regret that afterwards, that's typically the case and we have those feelings of deflation. One way to get around it is to do things like temptation bundling. We can also look at things in terms of getting a more of a focus, doing things in shorter sprints, doing those things and reframing how we look at those tasks that we call it funds. Folks, I hope you got some benefit from this podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. I'd love to hear your views about how you do a procrastination. If you found this podcast useful, I'd love it if you could leave some feedback, give me some comments and share it with those who you feel will benefit from that. Until next week, folks, don't procrastinate too much.

We hope you enjoyed this episode and appreciate you taking the time to listen to the show. We hope you got some value. If you did, then we'd love it if you shared the episode. We look forward to you joining us next week for another I Hate Numbers episode.