‘THIS is impossible,” I said to myself as I was given a project of creating an onboarding program for implementation in all sites around the world. It was a daunting project but I also found the task exciting and challenging. Unnerving, too: I did not know where to start. So many things raced through my mind, like people I need to talk to, logistics, manpower allocation and the myriad details which could go wrong.
And because I was obsessing about these things, I was not able to do anything for a day or two except to focus on my other projects. On the third day, I had to force myself to start planning for the onboarding project because my director wanted to talk to me about it the following day. I wracked my brain for a plan because I had been procrastinating and putting it off for some time. I thought I still had time to come up with a strategy but I ended up scrambling for something to present.
One time or another, we have procrastinated. We have put off something which we needed to do at work or in the house. Like when we keep putting off cleaning a pile of books in a corner of our room which has become a wall of paperbacks. Or the time we swore we would clean the garden—only to wake up one morning to a garden of weeds and your ornamentals have all died. Or the time when your boss asked you to do a report, and just when you thought she had forgotten all about it, she suddenly asks for it. We have all been guilty of procrastinating.
I have learned a few things on how to overcome procrastination through the onboarding project. One of the most important lessons I have learned is how to eat an elephant.
How do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time.
Monumental tasks are made easier when you break them down into smaller tasks. You cannot take on one big project all in one day. Take, for example, organizing your house. If you want to organize everything in it, start with one area at a time. You
can start with your bedroom and if your room is big, you can still break it down into several more areas, like your closet, your bed (and whatever is under it), your books, your gadgets, and any other special space or corner you have in your room. This way, a seemingly insurmountable task becomes bite-sized and easier to digest.
Once you have divided it into smaller tasks, spread it out into daily tasks and make a checklist. This will help you have a visual cue of your progress, aiding you in identifying which tasks you need to complete first. It also serves as a motivator because the more tasks you accomplish and tick off, the more you are encouraged to finish everything in your list. Checklists are a good way of providing direction to your day, and help you approximate the time needed for each task.
Which will also help you in rewarding yourself. One of the things people forget to do is to reward themselves for accomplished tasks. This is especially helpful when you have a plethora of tasks waiting to be finished. Rewarding yourself can help you get over the exhaustion from finishing a chore, and replenishes you for the next task on the list. Your reward does not necessarily have to be big. You can reward yourself by watching an episode of your favorite Koreanovela, or eating your favorite snack, or going out with friends. Just make sure your reward will not get in the way of you completing the other tasks. Your reward is meant to reinforce your resolve to finish not just the tasks for the day, but the entire project as a whole. The reward you give yourself creates momentum for your next tasks.
Speaking of momentum, the laws of physics also apply to tasks. Think inertia. A body at rest remains at rest unless a force acts on it. The same goes for the tasks in your checklist. Keep moving. Start somewhere and keep on doing it. Some people advise doing the easiest tasks first so you can have a sense of accomplishment which should propel you to finish what you have started. Others say do the difficult ones first because you need most of your willpower and effort in the beginning. For me, choose whichever works for you at a given time because the most important thing is to just keep on moving and moving. And when you are done with a task, reward yourself.
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” goes the saying. One of the reasons why we procrastinate is that gnawing feeling that doing these tasks interfere with our down time. We think that because we do not have enough time for play, it is only perfectly reasonable to take our sweet time in accomplishing out tasks. Like in the case of cleaning each room of the house: we think doing so would get in the way of our fun because we would rather do something else. But by doing a checklist and rewarding ourselves accordingly, we create a pattern which will help us get out of the doldrums in organizing our house and stay on a roll.
It took some time for me to get myself going for the onboarding project. But surprisingly enough, the first phase of the onboarding program was well-received by senior leadership in the corporate headquarters. There were several hiccups and small wins along the way but my team and I have done well, thanks to our checklists and small-win celebrations.
What have you been putting off lately? Maybe you can start with writing it down, breaking it apart into tasks and plan the rewards along the way. You would be surprised to see in the end that it was not so impossible after all.