One Genius Tool to Beat Procrastination …and How I Used It to Write This Article

It figures.

Weeks ago, I committed to writing this article on procrastination. And with a hard deadline coming up, guess what I did?

Yep…I waited until the last minute.

In my defense, I knew that I had this genius tool in my knapsack. It rarely fails me. Whenever I get stuck due to excessive procrastination, I pull this tool out. And it works like magic.

Can I tell you about it?

But first, I’d like you to get up and do something. Do you have a task or project that you’ve intended to begin? Or, better yet, something you’ve been procrastinating on? Do these five steps now. I’m serious.

1. Stop reading this article.
2. Get a pen and a blank sheet of paper.
3. Spend 60-120 seconds planning how you intend to tackle the task/project.
   1. If it’s a letter that you’ve been meaning to write, compose the first sentence. Or the last sentence. Or any sentence, in fact.
   2. If it’s a marketing campaign that you’ve been putting off, identify the campaign’s objectives. Or the resources you’ll need.
4. For now, it doesn’t really matter what you put on the blank piece of paper. And it doesn’t have to be perfect.
5. All that matters is that you write something. All that matters is that you start the task.

OK…got it?

I’ll wait here while you do this.

Congratulations! You’ve just activated the genius tool that I’m talking about. You’ve just experienced the Zeigarnik Effect.

Bluma Zeigarnik (1901-1988) was a Lithuanian-born Soviet psychologist and psychiatrist who conducted studies on memory in relation to incomplete and completed tasks. In 1927, Zeigarnik made an astute observation that was drawn from observing waiters serving restaurant customers. Waiters of unpaid orders seemed to have vivid recollections of their outstanding orders. Yet, once the bill was paid, the details of the order went out of their heads rapidly.

Her subsequent inquiries of this phenomenon became known as the Zeigarnik Effect. Through her further studies, Zeigarnik concluded that the “recall-value” of unfinished tasks is high because it’s human nature to complete a task that we’ve already begun. When we don’t finish a task or project, there’s mental tension. This mental tension keeps the unfinished task more prominently in our memory, whereas completion of the task provides closure, and a release of the tension.

What the Zeigarnik Effect teaches is that one weapon for beating procrastination is starting somewhere…anywhere.

Although the technique is simple, we often forget it because we get so wrapped up in thinking about the most difficult parts of our projects. The sense of foreboding can be a big contributor to procrastination.

The Zeigarnik effect has an important exception. It doesn’t work so well when you’re not particularly motivated to achieve your goal or don’t expect to do well. This is true of goals in general: When they seem unattractive or impossible, we don’t bother with them. More on this later.

But if we value the goal and think it’s possible, just taking a first step could be the difference between failure and success.

How I got going

Here’s what I did to get this article going.

Actually, I used a combination of two go-to tools that I like to use: the Zeigarnik effect and mind mapping.

• I tore out a blank sheet of graph paper, one of those quad pad ruled sheets with perpendicular lines along the vertical and horizontal axis…and attached this paper to my favorite, old-timey clipboard.
• In the center of the graph paper, I wrote the title of this article (which I already knew in my head), “One Genius Tool to Beat Procrastination.”
• Using all of the 360-degrees of the paper surrounding the title, I began writing the bits and pieces that I thought might make it into the article: the Zeigarnik effect, Bluma Zeigarnik’s history, random quotes about procrastination, other disconnected thoughts on procrastination, and so forth.
• In the mind mapping style, I connected the random thoughts on the paper with lines and squiggles, where appropriate.
• Then, after thinking and scribbling notes for 10 minutes, I set it all aside.
• Wham! There it was…the beginning of the article.
• And guess what? After avoiding thinking about the article for weeks, all of a sudden I couldn’t STOP thinking about it.

Here’s what the graph paper looked like after my mind mapping, so you can see what it looks like (you can click the image for a larger view):

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Words to the wise

The Zeigarnik effect doesn’t fix all procrastination. It especially doesn’t work on tasks that aren’t that important to you. (For these projects that get stalled, ask yourself the simple question… “Is this still an important priority for me?” If it isn’t, reprioritize.)

Also, beware of completion bias. This is the desire to complete a project, which compels you to seek out the easy projects first, like answering emails, returning phone calls, or whatever. If this is happening consistently, you’ll need to do a triage on the prioritization of your to-do list, e.g. select one, single item as the absolute most important thing you need to get done that day. That’s going to be the item you want to start working on as soon as possible in the day.

Finally, the Zeigarnik tool is most effective at breaking the mental inertia at the initial stages of a project. To sustain momentum of ongoing projects is a horse of a different color, whereby creating accountability structures or finding accountability partners might be more helpful. But this would be a different article for another day.

Concluding thoughts

For the handful of you folks who didn’t complete the prior exercise where I asked you to get up and write stuff down (you know who you are ☺), let’s go back to it for review:

1. Set a timer for five or 10 minutes. No longer.
2. Get a pen and a blank sheet of paper.
3. Spend three-five minutes planning how you intend to tackle the task/project that you’ve been procrastinating on.
   1. If it’s a letter that you’ve been meaning to write, compose the first sentence. Or the last sentence. Or any sentence, in fact.
   2. If it’s a marketing campaign that you’ve been putting off, identify the campaign’s objectives. Or the resources you’ll need. Or any part of the campaign that you’ve been thinking about.
   3. If it’s a workshop that you’ve been wanting to do, set a date. Or write an outline of what you want to cover. Or start a checklist of the steps that you need to complete.
4. For now, it doesn’t really matter what you put on the blank piece of paper. And it doesn’t have to be perfect.
5. All that matters is that you write something. All that matters is that you start the task. Just begin building that momentum.
6. Finally, don’t start with the hardest bit. Try something easy first. If you can just get under way with any part of a project, then the rest will tend to follow. Once you’ve made a start, however trivial, there’s something drawing you on to the end.
7. When the timer goes off…stop. Stand up. Stretch. Take a break. Go for a walk. Get a cup of coffee/tea/water…and say a special thanks to Bluma Zeigarnik.

There it is, a simple tool to break the mental logjams that can obstruct our takeoffs and launchings. Sometimes, the secret to getting ahead is just getting started.

I trust you find this helpful.