My quest to stop procrastinating, could I find the perfect hack to eradicate procrastination from my life forever?

At some point, I must do something about my procrastination habit,” is a thought I’ve had at periodic intervals, before deciding to do something else instead. It was last year that I first began to seriously ponder it. January when I mentioned it to my colleagues. A few weeks later when I decided to get advice from some experts. A few weeks more when I set up time to talk to them. And here I am now, in the middle of March, finally siting down to write about what I learnt from my quest to stop procrastinating. The piece you are reading has become a running joke among my colleagues. “Oh, by the way, how’s the procrastination feature going, Jessie?” Each time I smile with slightly gritted teeth as I update them on its status. “Not got round to it yet!” But I am far from alone in finding endless things to do in order to put off a task I want to avoid. In 2010, a survey found that 95 per cent of people admit to procrastinating some of the time, while in 2013 a study discovered that 20 per cent of us procrastinate chronically. Writer-director Charlie Kaufman has made high art from procrastination with films such as Synecdoche, New York and Adaptation. In an interview, he said he’d come to realise that, for him, “stalling is a creative technique”. But most of us don’t channel this pesky habit so creatively. In fact, it’s only going to rise because, in our permanently connected, always-on age, distraction and procrastination go together like strawberries and cream (except far less enjoyable). Just this month, more articles have decried the dangers of “bedtime procrastination” — staring helplessly at our phones, and all the other things we do to delay going to bed — inevitably playing havoc with our minds, bodies and souls in the process. Apparently, procrastination is so unavoidable that even pigeons are guilty of it. The Cambridge Dictionary defines procrastination as “the act of delaying something that must be done, oten because it is unpleasant or boring”. I mean, who among us has not sinned? Although I’d class myself as a fairly productive person, my procrastination hits hard when I have to change gears and address a task that requires specific focus and concentration (like, for example, writing a feature about procrastination). It manifests in many ways, including but not limited to: completing every non-urgent work task that I can, checking Slack, making seven cups of tea, checking my emails, doing the washing up, checking Slack again, googling “how to stop procrastinating”, Whatsapping my friends to tell them I’ve just googled “how to stop procrastinating”. Oh, and checking Slack again.

This doesn’t happen every time. But when it does — and even though the work gets done and I don’t miss deadlines — the hours leading up to it are horrible. I hate the immobilising feeling that procrastination gives me — why can’t I just do it? I want to be able to sit down at my desk in perfect harmony, typing away serenely as I achieve effortless productivity and a state of deep, immersive focus! So. I decided that it was time to address this; that it was time for “new year, new me” (three months in now but no worries). Could I find the perfect hack to eradicate procrastination from my life forever? It turns out it’s not quite that simple. Dr Mahrukh Khwaja, founder of wellness startup Mind Ninja, is a positive psychologist and accredited mindfulness teacher with a zen-like aura of wisdom. She uses science-backed methods around mindfulness and self-compassion to support workplace wellbeing, and when I enlist her help, she starts by giving me some Lego. Khwaja asks me to build something with it that represents my procrastination, and I dive straight in, creating a chaotic pile of different-sized bricks, helmed by a headless person. Essentially: my procrastination is a picture of overwhelm that I don’t feel in control of. As I’m building my masterpiece, she asks me to explain the emotions I feel when I’m procrastinating — frustration, helplessness, anger — and the messages I hear in my head. “I can’t do it,” is generally my main recurring thought.

“Everyone’s on a scale with it, so it’s worth delving into,” she explains. “I’ve heard of procrastinators who will be delivering a talk and literally doing their slides just minutes before they’re about to present something. It doesn’t sound like you’re that level, it’s more that you’re normally quite productive, but you’d love to be ahead of time so you can do other things.” Yes! So why am I puting these annoying obstacles in my own way?