Research says procrastination costs you. A lot. But seriously, no one ever said I’d rather prepare my sales presentation than see the latest exotic slug ‘I F*cking Love Science’ posted on Facebook.
Psychologists (who are surprisingly good procrastinators) have come up with multiple reasons for procrastination – probably while they were supposed to be doing something else. They even developed a formula for calculating your likelihood of procrastination in any given situation. If developing this formula wasn’t an act of true procrastination I don’t know what is. It looks like this:

If you feel yourself inexorably drawn to googling how to use this formula, congratulations! You are a true procrastinator.

But what is a true procrastinator?

Some people masquerade as procrastinators but are really just a bit shit with time management. If this is you, download Jon’s free time management tools or better still, get yourself a Small Fish business coach.

Some people look like procrastinators but rather than putting off stuff that’s important long term for something more fun short term (as procrastinators do) these people don’t know where to start. If this is you, you might be a bit shit at goal setting and have goals that are either too detailed (so you’re overwhelmed) or not detailed enough (the next step is too big). Also try the business coach solution.

True procrastinators, the genuine article, have a few things going on. Mostly being impulsive and having difficulty with self-regulation.

When you’re impulsive, you have a strong approach system (technical psychological term). This means you focus on approaching all good feeling things rather than avoiding painful things. You’re always looking for reward. Deadlines are often too far away to be rewarding and you can’t get your butt into gear until D-day is tomorrow. Plus you’re easily distracted by anything that seems like it could be fun.

Other procrastinators have the opposite. They can’t tolerate bad feelings. So anything that comes up like fear (I probably won’t get the sale anyway, I’m not good enough, what if I actually succeed and can’t maintain it?) sends them straight into a procrastination tailspin. That’s when counting cat fleas, scrubbing the s-bend by hand, and stripping the garden of dead leaves one by one seem like preferable activities. There’s no personal investment in them. You have nothing to lose if you count the number of fleas wrong.

As you can imagine, true procrastination is trickier to remedy. But it is possible.

Stay tuned for the soon to be released “ Blah Blah Procrastination “ program.