Six Tips to Help Combat Procrastination

Jeremy Gibbs
4 days ago
5 min read

Leadership can be stressful.

You put in long hours, often take work home, and spend a large part of your day dealing with the unexpected. The problems that aren’t easily solved get escalated directly to you.

You make hundreds of choices each day that affect a large number of people. Deadlines approach quickly, and competing priorities always leave you reflecting on whether you made the best decisions.

And yet the largest contributor to job stress may not be readily apparent...because it could be you.

The largest contributor to job stress may not be readily apparent...because it could be you.

How many times have you looked at a task and said, “I’ll get to it later”? How many items are still on your to-do list that could have been completed weeks ago?

How many times have you been relieved to see white space on your calendar, only to look back and ask, “Where did the time go?”

In school leadership, procrastination is the enemy.

Some leaders attempt to attack procrastination with multitasking, but multitasking has been proven to be a bad idea. According to a study from Stanford researcher Clifford Nass, multitaskers are worse at filtering information, switching between tasks, and maintaining a high working memory than people who don’t multitask.

Even though you may feel busier, poor performance from multitasking can actually lead you to procrastinate even more.

The good news is that you can anticipate procrastination and fight it before it starts.

Here are six tips to help you combat procrastination and reduce the stress in your life.

Invest time in your priorities.

School leaders are great firefighters. We like to solve problems, but if we’re not careful, we’ll spend all our time dealing with urgent issues that arise on any given day. We may ignore the underlying conditions that lead to these issues.

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey suggests classifying tasks into four quadrants with different levels of urgency vs. importance. If we invest more time into what is important but not urgent, then we will have fewer urgent and important issues that pop up.

When an unexpected issue occurs, reflect on the conditions that led to that issue. Is there a policy that needs to be implemented, enforced, or changed? For example, if you spend a lot of time handling discipline in an area where students have less supervision, you can save yourself a lot of time and headache by assigning an adult to supervise that area.

Complete the most challenging tasks first.

When you look at your to-do list, what is the item that you want to do the least? Pay attention to your emotional reaction. If you don't want to do it, that’s likely where you should start.

Some people may think that you should start your day off with a few easy tasks. In my experience, however, marking off the easy tasks gives a feeling of satisfaction, and you may continue to put off the more challenging tasks.

It’s just like when you were a kid. You have to eat your vegetables before you get dessert.

Front-load your more difficult tasks, and you’ll get a lot more accomplished.

Break down large tasks into manageable chunks.

The big items on your to-do list may keep getting overlooked because they’re just too big. Ask yourself, what is the smallest thing you could do to make progress?

Start small to build momentum. Completing this year’s teacher evaluations is a big task that must be completed over months. The smallest thing you could do would be to pick up your laptop and walk out of the office.

Without that first step, you’d never get started!

Likewise, filling out a new data chart begins with downloading data from the website.

Anything that takes over two hours should be broken down into smaller tasks. But even then, your small tasks may be too big.

Set artificial deadlines.

Some people think they work best under pressure–and they may be right! Imagine you have a big paper due Sunday night at 11:59 p.m., and it’s Sunday night at 8:00. You’re going to work with urgency to get that paper done by the deadline.

Now imagine it’s Thursday night, and you set your own deadline that the paper must be completed by the end of the day. If you get it done, you’ll have the whole weekend to relax.

Apply artificial pressure by setting your own artificial deadlines. School leaders already do this for direct reports (or if you don’t, you’d better start). Why not do it for yourself?

Also, don’t let perfectionism be a form of procrastination.

If you’re affected by analysis paralysis, then set your goal to be a B+ instead of an A.

It’s far better to have a completed task done well than an incomplete task done perfectly.

Actively reduce the number of tasks you have.

As a school leader, there are so many things that you’re responsible for that you don’t actually have to do. If your to-do list has thirty items on it, you need some help.

Author and business coach Michael Hyatt says that leaders should try to automate, delegate, or eliminate every task that doesn’t have to be completed by them. The ultimate goal should be to spend your time each day doing what only you can do.

Automate routine tasks. Use keystone habits to automatically remind you about tasks that take virtually no time to complete. (Keystone habits are actions you perform regularly, such as brushing your teeth every evening, that can trigger other automatic habits, such as flossing.) You could check your student attendance every time or check lesson plans, for instance. You should also use technology to your advantage. For example, I often write and schedule emails to come out at just the right times so that I don’t have to compose them throughout the day.
Delegate menial tasks. There are some things that are terrible time-wasters that someone else could spend their time doing. I look at it as a resource issue for the district–if you are getting paid three times as much as someone to manage a task that is not mission-critical (and they have time available,) delegate that task to them so that you can focus on more impactful tasks.
Eliminate useless tasks. There are some things you do that may not be beneficial at all. I once spent a lot of time building and updating a school calendar in Google Docs. I wanted everyone to have it available when planning events. I realized after a few months that teachers and staff weren’t opening it, so instead of doubling down and encouraging teachers to use the calendar, I just stopped using it.

Eliminate distractions.

I have an open door policy for my office. Ninety-five percent of the time, my door is open and people are invited to come in.

The other five percent of the time, my door is closed, and teachers and students know not to disturb me. When I’m working on something important, I can’t afford to get off track.

There are many things you can do to eliminate distractions. You could check your email at the same time each day instead of checking it all throughout the day. You might leave your cell phone in his office if you're observing teachers.