David Ramos

(Editor’s note: Since I didn’t receive an article from David in time for my deadline this week, I am resurrecting an oldie but goodie from back in July.)

I am the world’s worst procrastinator. Wow, that felt great to say (write)! Let’s hope they are correct about the first step to solving your problem is admitting that you have one. Procrastination is one of my many, many terrible habits, but it is the only one I am focused on this week. I am really serious about understanding why and what can be done regarding this debilitating flaw so that I can improve myself. So, I set out to do some research this week on the subject and thought it might be helpful in some way, for the five or six people who like to read what I write, to see what I found out regarding the subject and what to do to overcome it. I read/researched experts on the subject such as Dr. Neil Fiore, Dr. David Nowell, Dr. Bill Knause, and a little Stephen Covey to boot.

If you, like me, have found yourself putting off important tasks over and over again, let me ease your pain…you’re not alone! In fact, many people procrastinate to some degree. I found this comforting because nobody likes to be alone in their misery. As a matter of fact, this is a downright global pandemic people! Everyone is doing it; I mean doing nothing, what I mean is a lot of people are putting things off and procrastinating. Some are so chronically affected by procrastination that it stops them fulfilling their potential and disrupts their profession/career. And this is what we are trying to avoid here with this article this week, we don’t want to allow people not to reach their full potential in their sales careers.

The key to controlling this destructive habit is to recognize when you start procrastinating, understand why it happens (even to the best of us), and take active steps to manage your time and outcomes better.

What is procrastination? In a nutshell, you procrastinate when you put off things that you should be focusing on right now, usually in favor of doing something, anything that is more enjoyable or that you’re more comfortable doing.

How to Overcome Procrastination

Follow these steps to deal with and control procrastination:

Step 1: Admit That You Are Procrastinating

If you’re honest with yourself, you probably know when you’re procrastinating, right?

Here are some useful indicators that will help you know when you’re procrastinating:

Filling your day with low priority tasks from your To Do List (that is if you even make a To Do List).
Reading e-mails several times without starting work on them or deciding what you’re going to do with them.
Sitting down to start a high-priority task, and almost immediately going off to make a cup of coffee or go to socialize with someone in the office.
Leaving an item on your To Do list for a long time, even though you know it’s important.
Regularly saying “Yes” to unimportant tasks that others ask you to do, and filling your time with these instead of getting on with the important tasks already on your list.
Waiting for the “right mood” or the “right time” to tackle the important task at hand.

Step 2: Understand Why You’re Procrastinating

Why you procrastinate can depend on both you and the task. But it’s important to understand which of the two is relevant in a given situation, so that you can select the best approach for overcoming your reluctance to get going.

One reason for procrastination is that people find a particular job unpleasant, and try to avoid it because of that. Most jobs have unpleasant or boring aspects to them, for sales people this might be prospecting or updating your CRM.

Another cause is that people are disorganized. Organized people manage to fend off the temptation to procrastinate, because they will have things like a prioritized to-do list and schedules which emphasize how important the piece work is, and identify precisely when it’s due. They’ll also have planned how long a task will take to do, and will have worked back from that point to identify when they need to get started in order to avoid it being late. Organized people are also better placed to avoid procrastination, because they know how to break the work down into manageable “next steps”.

Even the organized people can feel overwhelmed by the task. Some may doubt that they have the skills or resources they think they need, so they seek comfort in doing tasks they know they’re capable of completing.

Unfortunately, the big task isn’t going to go away – truly important tasks rarely do.

Surprisingly, perfectionists are often procrastinators, as they can tend to think “I don’t have the right skills or resources to do this perfectly now, so I won’t do it at all.”

One final major cause of procrastination is having underdeveloped decision-making skills. If you simply can’t decide what to do, you’re likely to put off taking action in case you do the wrong thing.

Step 3: Create Anti-Procrastination Strategies

Procrastination is a habit – a deeply ingrained pattern of behavior. That means that you won’t just break it overnight. Habits only stop being habits when you have persistently stopped practicing them, so use as many approaches as possible to maximize your chances of beating procrastination. Some tips will work better for some people than for others, and for some tasks than others. And, sometimes, you may simply need to try a fresh approach to beat the “procrastination peril”!

Here are some tips I read up on (and that I am working on implementing myself) to help motivate you to get moving:

Ask someone that you respect and trust to check up on your work. Peer pressure works!
Identify the unpleasant consequences of NOT doing the task.
Work out the cost of your time to your employer. As your employers are paying you to do the things that they think are important, you’re not delivering value for money if you’re not doing those things. Maybe you can shame yourself into getting going.

If you’re procrastinating because you’re disorganized, change it and get organized! I spent all day Sunday cleaning my office so I could be better organized for this week and start hitting my deadlines.

Keep a To-Do list so that you can’t “conveniently” forget about unpleasant or overwhelming tasks. I have a whiteboard that I hung in my office and so far, it is working great!
Use an Urgent/Important Matrix like the one from Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to help prioritize your to-do list so that you can’t try to kid yourself that it would be acceptable to put off doing something on the grounds that it’s unimportant, or that you have many urgent things which ought to be done first when, in reality, you’re procrastinating.
Become a master of scheduling and project planning, so that you know when to start those all-important projects.
Set yourself time-bound goals: that way, you’ll have no time for procrastination!
Focus on one task at a time.

If you’re putting off starting a project because you find it overwhelming, you need to take a different approach. Here are some tips:

Break the project into a set of smaller, more manageable tasks. You may find it helpful to create an action plan.
Start with some quick, small tasks if you can, even if these aren’t the logical first actions. You’ll feel that you’re achieving things, and so perhaps the whole project won’t be so overwhelming.

If you’re procrastinating because you find the task unpleasant:

Many procrastinators overestimate the unpleasantness of a task. So give it a try! You may find that it’s not as bad as you thought!
Hold the unpleasant consequences of not doing the work at the front of your mind. Like, if you don’t prospect you won’t sell, thus you won’t make quota, and thus you will get fired.
Reward yourself for doing the task.

Key Points

To have a good chance of conquering procrastination, you need to spot straight away that you’re doing it. Then, you need to identify why you’re procrastinating and taken appropriate steps to overcome the block.

About the author: David Ramos is sales operations consultant for Strategy Development, an industry management consulting and advance sales training firm providing sales, service & MPS information, including workshops for the BTA as well as a MPS Sales eLearning program with InfoTrends. He also instructs a selling skills workshop called “Sell With Success” . You can reach him at www.strategydevelopment.com or ramos@strategydevelopment.com.