Procrastination: a problem in itself, or a symptom of something bigger?

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A lawyer in a large international law firm had a promising career ahead of him. Unfortunately, his tendency to procrastinate was causing him serious problems. Before every big deadline, he would distract himself with ever-more-elaborate baking projects, virtually guaranteeing that each time he had a major assignment he was left with just a few precious hours to get everything done — despite the fact that his supervising partner did everything she could to ensure that he had plenty of time to comfortably complete his work.

In an effort to find a solution to his procrastination problem, the lawyer read every book he could find on working effectively, tested all of the “top tips” promoted by self-described productivity gurus, and read numerous articles about procrastination and its remedies. Although he experienced a few brief periods of improvement, they were inevitably followed by a relapse of his old habits.

He eventually contacted me in search of additional strategies to solve his problem. When instead of additional “quick fixes” I suggested that we start instead by understanding why exactly he behaved the way he did, he was at first not so receptive: he explained to me that he knew himself well (he was in fact fairly introspective), and attributed his procrastination to a simple lack of motivation. He just needed a little bit of help to find it.

Or, at least that’s what he thought.

In fact, our work together revealed that, deep down, he harboured doubts in his capacities, which meant that he found even the most anodyne comments and modifications from his boss extremely difficult to digest. As a result, he developed anxiety around handing in his work, and procrastination helped him to avoid this anxiety (at least until the very last possible moment).

But that didn’t explain everything — so we dug even deeper.

Taking the time to fully understand what was going on every time he procrastinated helped him to realise that another, more pertinent cause was at play without him even being aware of it. As incredible as it sounds, sometimes people procrastinate in order to ensure that they are unable to produce their best work. I call this “procrastination as self-sabotage” — and this lawyer was the archetype. 

Over the course of his coaching sessions, he was able to identify the subconscious reasoning that led to his behaviour. It went something like this: since he was afraid that he would never be good enough as the other lawyers in his firm, the best way for him to avoid confronting this fear was to ensure that he never had the opportunity to do his best work. And what better way to do that than ensure that he always had to rush to get things done?

That way, if his work wasn’t up to standard, he could attribute his shortcomings to not having spent enough time on his work — which was much easier for him to handle than questioning his fundamental capacity to do the work. 

Conversely, if ever he did allocate enough time to do his work properly but still came up short, the failure would have been too much for him to handle: instead of a mere lack of time, he would have to consider the fact that he might have a fundamental incapacity to be the lawyer he wanted to be. 

The true reason for his procrastination, therefore, was that beating himself up over a simple lack of discipline was much easier for him to deal with than potentially considering that he might not have the right skills to excel in his job. He was therefore able to understand what was behind his habit of distracting himself by making croissant after croissant until he was left with barely enough time to do a slapdash job on his assignments.

Identifying the true origin of his problem ended up being a turning point for him. It allowed him to treat his problem at the source — his self confidence, his attitude towards feedback, his openness to critiques — instead of wasting his time with an endless string of supposed quick fixes for procrastination. In other words, since his procrastination was really only the tip of the iceberg, some in-depth work was necessary in order to help him free himself from this bad habit once and for all.

What are some unhealthy work behaviours you have been wanting to leave behind for some time now? Click here and we’ll have a chat about it. Would you like to know more about my experience and qualifications first? No problem — all you need to know is right here.