5 Proven Steps to Stop Procrastinating. Right Now.

If you’re anything like us, in college there was always someone — a type, really — you just hated. You know who we’re talking about. We’re talking about that one friend who wrote five complete drafts of each paper. Who started their problem sets two weeks early. Who slept like a baby the night before every test, having diligently studied for weeks, while the rest of us sat up bleary-eyed, trying (and failing) to squeeze a semester’s worth of information into our already-full heads.

Yeah, that person.

Now, if you were that person, we’ve got only good wishes for you. Because the truth is that we hated you because we were jealous. We all secretly wished we were you. So go ahead, close this page and get back to (your incredibly satisfying) work.

If you weren’t one of those people, keep on reading.

Since then, we’ve all seen the studies showing that procrastination can — in fact — boost creativity and lateral thinking. We also know that saying “stop procrastinating” isn’t quite enough — it’s like asking your dog to just “stop sniffing stuff.” So we’re not advocating giving procrastination up entirely.

That said, there are some techniques that can actually help you get stuff done. Let’s check them out.

1. Don’t Wait for the Right Mood

Often we don’t start doing something because we “don’t feel up to it.” Put more psychologically, we often imagine that our emotional state has to match the thing we’re doing, and if it doesn’t, something’s not right.

The trick is to realize that “feeling like it” doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with actually doing things. After all, if you’re doing things, you’re doing them, regardless of how you “feel” about doing it. So give yourself room to detach your feelings from your actions. Plus, once you start doing something, your feeling about doing it often changes.

2. Just Do a (Super) Small Thing

Ah, that huge, enormous, looming job. It’s so big, you’ll never get it done!

Maybe true, maybe not. But you know what you can get done? Something small. Even something really small. If you’ve got a bunch of paperwork to do, just put dates on the everything. Or do the top page only. Or do something you know you can get done in 15 minutes.

Forward progress always beats no progress. Plus, once you start, you might find that momentum you’re looking for.

3. Give Yourself License to Stop

In line with #2, one great way to get moving on something is to tell yourself you only have to do it for a short amount of time — 20 minutes, say. Then hold yourself to it!

If after 20 minutes you still feel like working on the thing you don’t want to do, by all means keep working on it. But if not, give yourself license to stop. Do 20 minutes then move on to something else. Later in the day, do 20 more minutes. Tomorrow, do 20 more. Use an easy time tracker to get an idea of how your most productive days are divvied up.

The ultimate goal is just to get yourself in the chair, working. But it only works if you allow yourself room to stop.

4. Stop in the Middle

Here’s how Ernest Hemingway described his process for avoiding writer’s block:

“always … stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good ... That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.”

Pretty simple, right? When you’re working on something good, don’t keep going until you’ve finished it. Rather, stop in the middle. The next day, you won’t need to start from scratch — you’ll already be in the middle of things! Plus, it gives your brain cool stuff to work on in the meantime.

You can think of this less as dealing with acute procrastination and more as setting up a system to keep you from procrastinating in the first place.

5. Forgive Yourself for Procrastinating

In a study on procrastination, researchers found that students who procrastinated on an exam ended up procrastinating less for the next exam when they forgave themselves for procrastinating the first time. Rather than beat themselves up for procrastinating, these students let themselves off the hook.

The lesson? If you want to stop procrastinating, don’t obsess about it! Forgive yourself, then get back to work. (Good advice for many other things, yeah?)