“We just got married,” said the owner of the cafe, and showed me the photos on her phone.
“Aren't you going to put them in an album?” I asked her. “Oh yes, I would love to do that,” she said.
I told her how I'd created some mind-boggling photo albums recently, and she was keen to have one of her own. The photo album company had specialised software, and I offered to help her upload and format the photos. All she had to do was to shortlist about 30 photos.
Not 30 photos all at once, but just five a day.
Did she get started?
Well, you guessed correctly. A week later, she hadn't even begun.
“I can't understand it. It's something I want to do so badly, and yet I seem to procrastinate. I'm such a procrastinator.”
This is the very same person that has turned up to serve coffee every morning. We've had over 700 cups of espresso and never had a bitter, terrible cup. “That's because she's very diligent,” said her sister. “She makes sure everything is perfect, and keeps the machine clean so there are no grinds that would spoil your next cuppa.”
That description doesn't sound like a procrastinator to me.
It sounds like someone who's diligent, hardworking, and wants to do better. Not surprisingly, the ones who complain the most about being procrastinators aren't lazy at all. Yet somehow they seem to wear the mantle of being “procrastinators” quite easily. They miss a deadline, avoid shortlisting the photos, and the irritation washes over them again.
There are many reasons why we tend to procrastinate, but the question is “why do we procrastinate when we want to achieve something?”
Is it something to do with who we are?
Or is it mostly just a design problem?
Choose the second option, because it is almost never about you.
My friend Jason, who cooks his own meals, runs every day, and holds down a job at a hedge fund, had the same complaint. He wanted to get consistent at watercolour, and he sent me his paintings on WhatsApp. “I spend more time searching for what to paint than actually painting,” he told me. “Maybe I'm just a procrastinator.”
He wasn't.
Procrastination isn't about personality. It's a design problem, and a design problem has parts. In order to get something substantial or recurring done, two systems have to be running.
- Setup
- Motivation
Let's start with setup.
1) Setup is exactly as it sounds.
It's what you have to do in advance, so you can get started right away.
Let's take the example of Jason's watercolour journey. He started like we all do, motivated and keen to keep drawing and painting. What would he need to do to set up? As you'd expect, he'd need to have his paints ready, his watercolour book open, and have an idea of what to draw. At this precise point, things go a bit awry, because he's faced with an endless number of options.
Locked in uncertainty, the morning, a week or months can slip away.
I suggested that he stop choosing multiple images. He'd just drawn an elephant and enjoyed the process, so I suggested he do more of it. Not just a few more, but fifty of them over the next couple of months. I also sent him a Pinterest link, and all he had to do was keep five reference photos ahead of him. He never had to sit down again wondering, “What do I paint?” because he had enough reference images in the pipeline. His Setup was in place, and now it was a question of motivation.
2) Where would the motivation come from?
I suggested he send the drawings to his friends, family or give them as gifts to his colleagues at work. There's also the opportunity of making friends with the barista, and even with strangers on the street. While sending the drawings would need some work, he could also give them people within the neighbourhood. And the praise would come pouring in. People would ooh and ah at his work and he'd be motivated to keep going.
We believe that people should be self-motivated, but that's rubbish.
Motivation almost exclusively comes from other people. If you write neatly, cook well, or have pride in your garden, you can usually trace it back to when you were motivated by someone else in the past. If we fail to get at least one cheerleader, we invariably end up deciding to put things off until later.
Groups need both systems as well.
You and I, we've probably gone to a class. A few summers ago, I went to a French class. I was eager to get off the phone, and drop the app and learn in person. Was there a Setup in place? Of course there was. As I put down my $400 for the course, I was given a text book, membership card and the schedule for the course. But where was the motivation? Each person did their own work, never interacting much with each other and I was back to feeling like I was dealing with an app. The class had given me the Setup, but with no motivation, I stopped going after a few sessions.
Unless the group is built to interact, most motivation dries up quickly.
If you're by yourself, this Motivation factor is crucial. The cafe owner was in the same position. She had the Setup: the offer to help, the software, and the five-photo-a-day plan. What she didn't have was anyone waiting for the album, so I made a deal: $200 an hour to sit down with me and pick the photos. The faster she finished, the less she'd pay. Suddenly, there was a reason to start and to get the job completed.
Even with the best of intentions, Setup and Motivation can go off the rails
If possible, the person needs to do just one tiny thing. It may seem that two or three steps are not too much to ask for. Yet many of us need the smallest possible next step or we—yes, procrastinate. If you're trying to achieve something all by yourself, it's utterly crucial that you set the next step, and possibly make it as small as possible.
The lesser the energy required to do the task, the more likely it is that it will get done. And as far as motivation is concerned, you want to get your energy from as many sources as possible. Having an audience of one is wonderful, and sometimes that's all it takes. However, if you get praise from a variety of people: some you admire, and even from complete strangers, you will find yourself more energised to keep going.
The next time you catch yourself saying, “I'm such a procrastinator,” stop and think about it. It's likely that either the Setup or Motivation is missing, and that's a design problem.
A problem that is easy to fix, as long as you don't procrastinate.
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