Posted by We’ve all been there. You’ve got an important project to tackle, but instead of diving in, you’re suddenly invested in scrolling through LinkedIn, watching colleagues celebrate their latest achievements. Suddenly, your own tasks feel both unachievable and insignificant, right?
It’s easy to think of procrastination as a character flaw that needs willpower, grit and determination to overcome.
But what if it turned out that your environment, your social context, and the people around you are setting you up to procrastinate before you’ve even had time to think about it? This week, I want to explore how the social side of procrastination can either add fuel to your delays or help you overcome them.
The comparison trap
Let’s go back to that LinkedIn example. Every day, we’re bombarded with curated snapshots of other people’s successes, and suddenly your own goals feel a bit pathetic in comparison.
Your brain’s doing a number on you here: you see someone else’s polished final product – a great new website, their perfect presentation, a flawless panel appearance at an event you didn’t even know about – and you compare it to where you are right now. It’s apples and oranges; you’re comparing your messy starting point to someone else’s glossy finish line.
So the end result is that you don’t even begin. What’s the point when so many other people are already doing it better?
This comparison trap is particularly vicious because it masquerades as motivation. You might tell yourself you’re ‘doing research’ or ‘looking for inspiration’ when you’re still scrolling after half an hour, but actually, you’re paralysing yourself with ridiculously high standards before you’ve even got going.
Remember the reality here, you never see the behind-the-scenes struggle. You didn’t see the first eight terrible versions of the website, where nothing worked. You didn’t watch someone stay up till 3am working on their slide deck (or see their panic attack 10 minutes before the presentation). You weren’t actively looking for events to attend, let alone sending email after email trying to get on a discussion panel. You only see the highlight reel, and it’s setting you up to procrastinate (as well as tapdancing on your envy buttons).
Why deadline culture isn’t helping
Something that I think is surprising is the effect the workplace culture has on procrastination… Could it be making things worse?
Lots of businesses have become addicted to artificial urgency. Everything’s a high priority, every email needs an immediate response, and there’s a really strange, unhealthy badge of honour around pulling all-nighters to meet impossible deadlines.
The problem is that when everything’s urgent, nothing really is. Your brain learns to ignore the signals, because if you responded to every ‘urgent’ request straight away, you’d never get anything meaningful done! So instead, you develop a kind of urgency fatigue – you tune out until something becomes genuinely critical.
Of course, I know there are plenty of people who work best under the pressure of a deadline, but should deadline culture reward them? That person who left everything until the last minute, then gets praised for their ability to work under pressure, conveniently ignoring the fact they kind of created that pressure themselves.
If you’re in an environment that consistently rewards last-minute scrambling, it’s no wonder that you’ve started to procrastinate.
The accountability paradox
I often urge my coaching clients to share their goals or to work with an accountability buddy, and on the whole, I think this works brilliantly. But for some people, the pressure of being accountable (and of other peoples’ expectations) is exactly the thing that makes their procrastination worse.
If you’re struggling to get going or make progress, whilst I still think telling people your goals is a great idea, it could be that you’re choosing the wrong type of accountability – like setting goals that are too rigid, or sharing them with someone who doesn’t necessarily understand the challenges involved.
It’s at times like these that I think working with peer networks and mentors can really help you get over a hump: getting support rather than judgement, from people who are already familiar with what you’re trying to achieve. Don’t set absolutes (“I’m going to do X, Y and Z by Friday”), but instead, commit to working on specific tasks for set amounts of time to make some progress – remember, something is always better than nothing!
Environmental triggers you might not notice
People rely on their physical and digital environment to send them signals about what’s important and what can wait. The problem is, loads of these signals are working against you.
As an example, take a look at your desk. If it’s cluttered with half-finished projects, unopened mail, and other random crap, then your brain gets the message that nothing’s really important enough to focus on – it’s all just blended into a weird background noise.
Or consider your digital set up. Research shows that it takes around 20 minutes to regain your focus after you hear a notification ping, so if your phone buzzes every few minutes, or you hear emails coming in constantly, every interruption chips away at your concentration, and sends a subtle message that whatever you’re working on right now can wait.
You might think you’re procrastinating because you lack willpower, but actually, your environment is making it nearly impossible to concentrate.
The social currency of being busy
Something else that might be getting in your way is the cultural obsession with being busy. For a lot of people, being busy has become a status symbol. They compete over who’s more overwhelmed, who’s getting less sleep, who has more on their plate.
This creates a perverse incentive to procrastinate so no one thinks that you’re not working hard enough. You fill your time with lower-priority tasks, you say yes to things you shouldn’t, you create artificial complexity. You procrastinate on the important stuff because being busy feels more socially acceptable than being effective.
Creating a procrastination-proof environment
It’s not a lost cause though: once you recognise how your environment influences your procrastination, you can start to change it.
Turn off your notifications and switch your phone to silent for a start, and pick a time to check your emails/texts, rather than dealing with them as you hear them come in. Mute people on your social feeds that make you feel inadequate or envious, rather than motivated. Question deadlines that don’t seem realistic to find out if there’s wiggle room, or if you’re the one who usually leaves it till the last minute, explore ways of breaking that habit.
Be selective about who you share your goals with. Instead of broadcasting your intentions to everyone, choose one or two people you trust, and remember that progress isn’t usually linear – so if you do get obstacles, find ways to push through rather than distracting yourself to avoid the issue.
Not all of these changes are easy (eg pushing back on deadlines), so pick the low-hanging fruit and take it from there!
Getting a grip on things
The bottom line is that you don’t need more willpower – you need a better environment. Once you recognise how your surroundings influence your procrastination habits, you can start making changes that actually stick and stop beating yourself up.
What’s one change you could make today that would make it easier to tackle that task you’ve been putting off?