The Procrastination Cure summary

Imagine you have to give a big presentation in a week's time and find yourself with a free afternoon. It makes sense to devote this time to your presentation. Your future self will certainly thank you for it. But your present self? That self would rather watch Netflix. 

Your present self and your future self both want gratification. But they're not on the same page. Your present self wants instant gratification without considering long-term benefit or cost. Your future self wants long-term gratification from completing tasks that bring personal satisfaction and professional success, even if those tasks aren't as appealing as watching your favorite TV show right now.

Is there a task on your to-do list that fills you with dread? Perhaps it's sending an awkward email or filling out a complicated form. No matter what it is, tasks like these are almost always less time-consuming and less painful than we imagine them to be. The trick is just to start. But how?

Well, you could take the advice of writer Mark Twain. He once said, “If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do that first thing in the morning.” For him, unappealing chores were “frogs,” and best dealt with quickly.

A typical to-do list can stretch to a few pages – including big projects with tight deadlines and small chores with no due dates. Unfortunately, the more unwieldy your to-do list becomes, the more likely you are to procrastinate. But if you shorten your to-do list, you may get more done.

How short are we talking? Well, the magic number is seven or fewer. Seven tasks are conquerable over the course of a day, which solves the problem of incomplete tasks piling up. Plus, limiting your list to seven tasks forces you to cut back on busywork and concentrate on the essentials instead.

A calendar can be the procrastinator's best friend or worst enemy. Used smartly, this time management tool can keep you on track and on top of your to-do list. But overfill it – or underfill it – and it can actively hamper your efforts to be productive.

An overfilled calendar, like an overfilled to-do list, sets you up for failure. When you schedule too many tasks, you simply won't finish them, and your calendar will be a discouraging reminder that you didn't meet your goals for the day.

Procrastination is a battle between your present self and your future self. 

Your present self is all about immediate gratification. But if you want to achieve your long-term goals, you need to keep your future self in mind. Specifically, you need to stop giving your present self the opportunity to sabotage what your future self wants to achieve.

There may be many underlying psychological causes behind your procrastination habit, including fear of failure and negative self-talk. But sometimes the reason you procrastinate is far simpler than that: the task you need to complete is boring.

We're naturally inclined to put off work that's tedious or unnecessary. Fortunately, if you don't want to do something, you might not have to do it. In fact, removing dull or pointless tasks from your to-do list is almost guaranteed to increase your productivity.

It should be clear by now that there are many causes of procrastination. Unfortunately, there's still a tendency to associate procrastination with laziness and mental weakness. No wonder it's tough to admit that you have a procrastination problem! 

But you shouldn't feel embarrassed to share the fact that you struggle with procrastination. You're certainly not alone. In fact, procrastination is a habit to which all humans are prone. What's more, sharing your struggles can make procrastination much easier to overcome. And that's especially true when you ask others to help you deal with it.

There's a vicious cycle that many habitual procrastinators can easily fall into. 

You aim to complete a task. You procrastinate to the point where you're forced to abandon it, or else you finish it in a slapdash manner. You're unhappy with your work and feel like a failure.