Procrastination and anxiety - have you done it yet?

You have decided enough is enough and you want to change careers. You may even have some good ideas about what it is you would like to do.

Then a strange paralysis kicks in. You know you should be doing stuff to find a new career, but you just don't seem to be able to get round to doing it.

This is classic procrastination; actively deciding not to do something until a later time. However this later time is often unspecified, and so never seems to come.

Procrastination has many sources but can often be a result of feelings of anxiety, based on a perceived threat to your self esteem resulting from you doing a task.

For example:

• Sending off your CV raises a fear of it being rejected.
• Getting an interview means you may perform badly.

Avoiding these possibilities by putting off doing the task works in the short term, but obviously leaves you with the longer term consequence of job dissatisfaction.

In order to tackle procrastination it is therefore important to look at both practical and psychological aspects.

Practical Steps

On the practical side it helps to have a well organised action plan, written down.

By breaking tasks down into bite-sized chunks, with short deadlines for completion of stepping stone tasks, you can focus on these. For example, research a job on Monday, write CV for a specific job by Tuesday, post with covering letter on Wednesday.

Key points:

• Ensure the tasks are made smaller and therefore less daunting and there is a pace to the completion of them to give momentum.
• The deadlines need to be tight as this creates urgency.
• There should be a consequence for not completing to give some motivation. For example, denying yourself the chance to go out Friday night if you haven't done the task.
• Make a public commitment to your plan of action as well. Going through your planned actions with someone else and agreeing to meet up again to review how you got on is often a strong motivator.
• Celebrate when you have completed a task, even if it's just by making yourself a nice cup of tea and patting yourself on the back.

Adjusting you attitude

It is as important to recognise how you create the feelings that lead to procrastination in the first place.

You subconsciously chose to give certain meanings to events and actions. For example:

"If I am turned down from this job it means I am no good for it."
Result = you don't apply.

" I have to make this application perfect"
Result = you never compete it.

Key points

• Start noticing if you are thinking like this whilst procrastinating.
• Think about where these beliefs come from.
• Challenge the meanings you give to the events and actions and see if there could be a more useful belief.
  

Challenging meanings:

"If I am turned down for a job it means I am no good for it"
Ask yourself, "How do you know this is true? What else could it mean?"

" I have to make this application perfect"
Ask yourself "What is perfect? Is that realistic? Could it be better to do something 80% well and in good time rather than getting it in too late?"

Analysing and challenging how you create anxiety will help reduce it and mean you are better equipped to get on with finding a new career.

Also think about what attitude you want to have towards your career shift and what would be most useful.

An attitude like,

"I will enjoy the challenge of finding a new career and take pleasure from the fact it will involve some hard work, as the end result will be even more rewarding" can be a more useful frame of mind than say " I really want to change jobs but I didn't realise it would be so hard."

Acceptance that you need to forgo some more pleasurable short term activities to crack on with those job-finding tasks can also help stop you finding excuses for why you haven't done anything about it.

What next?

If you find yourself in the situation where you have been putting things off, make sure you take some time out to talk the situation through with someone else, and work out how you can best avoid procrastinating in the future. That in itself is a very useful first step.

Just remember to sort that out now.