Last Day of the Experiment: No More Overcorrecting Like a "Patient" | Procrastination Fighters, Day 5
The working week is over, but beating procrastination has no finish line.
The working week is over, but beating procrastination has no finish line.
In a 117-person support group, a few people really have beaten procrastination
This is the last day of the experiment. Our three volunteers, all self-declared severe procrastinators, somehow submitted a report every single day, which alone makes them heretics in the world of procrastination.
Every evening after a report went up, I shared it in the WeChat group of the "QDaily Procrastination-Beating Lab." The feeling that "I'm not procrastinating alone" made everyone sympathize with one another, and gave them a clear conscience to keep procrastinating.
A member whose WeChat ID is Jo spoke for many when she complained: "I understand the theory, but I still can't cure my procrastination." She has tried nearly every method we mentioned, and none of them worked.
Over the five days, quite a few people downloaded the tools used in the reports. But ff, a graduate student, told me: "It took me two days just to remember to download the apps, and I still haven't used them." The group gets livelier the later it gets. People with procrastination almost all stay up late: they feel they've done nothing all day, so they keep dragging it out, unwilling to let the day end.
Most of the group is stuck in a state of "the procrastination-beating reports are impressive, but I'll keep procrastinating anyway." Still, we found that a few members who actively sought treatment really are recovering. I received 11 reports submitted voluntarily, and two people submitted reports two days in a row. For them, that counts as one way of beating procrastination.
"Jiajia Loves Learning" said:
"Recently I worked out a treatment that suits me. Every night when I get home from overtime, I use the time I used to spend complaining to work out. While exercising, I plan out tonight and tomorrow, and reflect on what I got done today."
Chen Xin is a college junior who also interns at an iris-recognition technology company. She once described her symptoms this way: "When I'm procrastinating, anything is fine as long as I can look at my phone. I finish scrolling Moments and then check the official accounts, keep opening WeChat to see if anyone wants to chat, and I'd even rather memorize vocabulary than get out of bed."
aTimeLogger has proved a useful tool for her, because it pushes you to focus on just one thing in a given stretch of time. At the start of the experiment she questioned whether the Pomodoro timer was necessary: why stop every 25 minutes when you can focus for an hour? She later found that a full hour of focus is only the ideal case, and that TickTick worked better than she expected:
"One night I procrastinated until 1:30 a.m., and wrote down four tasks for the next day in TickTick. When I checked the next evening, three of them were done and only the last one was left. Without TickTick, I'd definitely have pushed that last task to the following day, or even the weekend."
Jiangjiang, encouraged by the lab, finally set up the WeChat official account she had long wanted to start. Miss Mushroom proudly told me that because she had so much to do and learn this week, she felt her procrastination was completely cured: "When these things are spread out, I procrastinate a lot. But when they're all packed together, whatever I do, I don't procrastinate anymore."
Jiaojiao, who works in media, is one of the many members who say their procrastination has not improved. But this week she used the Pomodoro method, and it did help her efficiency somewhat. "Because I kept thinking about getting better," she said, "I did try a bit harder."
The biggest drains on her efficiency were meetings, unexpected visitors and social apps. I asked her: in those moments of "procrastination," say after fifty minutes of scrolling Weibo, are you happy?
No. The reason is simple. It's like holiday homework when you were a kid: whenever you went out to play, the unfinished homework stayed on your mind, right up to the day before school started, when you rushed to finish it. The whole time, you kept blaming yourself for not starting earlier.
Some people claim to have cured their procrastination; some have at least beaten the anxiety it brings. Our five-day experiment may not offer much real help. But if one day you find yourself with a truly strong drive to beat procrastination, I hope you remember this report, and know that you are not the only one going through a not-so-pleasant course of treatment.
Keep it up!
Procrastination may rebound, like lost weight | Tang Yunlu, technology reporter
I got up in the morning, got dressed and went out for a run, only to find that Beijing's first snow had fallen. Snow at four in the morning has no color, only the sound of it pattering on branches and rooftops.
For five days straight I have strictly followed the "Tim Cook method": up at four, out to exercise, then reading and working in long, unbroken blocks during the quiet early morning.
In the few minutes I try to linger in bed, I enter the day's tasks, and the work I expect to be handed, into Any.do by priority. Over the five days I crossed off (that is, completed) 62 tasks. Four remain unfinished (three of them articles I've put off for more than a month...), and I've decided to finish them over the weekend, again by breaking them into smaller pieces.
I do most of my work alone, so while working and reading I use the Pomodoro timer to divide my time: for 25 minutes I concentrate on the task at hand, and I deal with the WeChat messages, texts and calls that need replies in the 5-minute breaks.
In the first few days I was keen on collecting tomatoes, but in the last two days I no longer needed them. Even without the tomato's enforced rules, I can shut out distractions. In fact, because I had stopped checking my phone, several times I only realized I had missed my break long after a timer had ended.
In the end, I logged 67 Pomodoros in total.
Pomodoro Time
Today's plan was to edit and push out the lab's WeChat official account post, finish reading Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, prepare today's story ideas, write a news piece in the morning, and discuss a feature for this weekend with colleagues in the afternoon. When I started writing this report, the feature was two-thirds done; by the time you read this update, I should be back to editing it.
But perhaps because of today's sudden drop in temperature, I was especially sleepy. My naps before the morning meeting and after lunch both ran longer than on previous days. The Power Nap, which claims to restore your energy with a short rest, seemed to have stopped working too.
At lunch, I told a colleague not to talk to me, because this was the only time I could look at Moments. My colleague replied: "You can look at your phone at other times too. You need to act like a normal person."
And when I reached the gap between Pomodoros and was about to join the chat in the break room, another colleague kindly took on the role of supervisor: "Get back to work. We'll talk when your experiment's over."
That made me realize that this week I haven't been living like a normal person. Or rather, for a long time, with procrastinated plans always weighing on me, I have more or less given up on a personal life. This week most of all.
Rescue Time recorded a detailed account of a week of computer use
I didn't watch any movies or videos, didn't visit shopping sites such as Taobao or Xiaohongshu, and turned down friends' invitations to go out and eat. If a camera had followed me 24 hours a day, the most common shot would be me facing the screen, expressionless, pounding the keyboard. Luckily, reading counts as entertainment for me.
I poured too much of my effort to change my situation into the procrastination cure. I tried to build several habits at once, getting up early, exercising and concentrating, while also trying to clear all my backlog on top of my normal workload.
The motivation that came from joining the experiment carried me through a week of intense work and life. So even if my procrastination looks cured on the surface, the rebound next week, once I'm out of the experiment, will be all the more pronounced.
I can't give myself a diagnosis of "procrastination gone." But at the very least, in the blocks I set aside to focus on one thing, I've grown used to resisting the lure of Moments, Weibo, WeChat, email and so on.
What I'm curious about is this: next week, how far will my procrastination bounce back?
What matters most is knowing what you are doing | Tara, project manager
The five-day experiment has reached its last day. Let me look back at the goals I set at the start:
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This week's plan
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Work: one project enters its closing stage; finish the execution work (√)
It wrapped up smoothly, but took more than three times as long as I expected.
- Work: one project needs a proposal submitted before it moves to execution (×)
When I began writing this report, the brackets held a √. Halfway through, they held a ×. This is a project manager's greatest frustration: whether your to-do list gets done is not up to you.
- Publish 3 articles on my personal WeChat official account (×)
So far I've published only 1. Two more are started but unfinished, and I expect to publish one on Saturday and one on Sunday.
The only time this week I used the Pomodoro timer properly, for more than 6 Pomodoros, was writing that one article.
It came from an idea that struck me out of nowhere: with Beijing's first snow, I planned to spend just two Pomodoros writing about an old film. But once I started, I wrote it, found the images and edited it in total concentration, without even stopping for the 5-minute breaks.
So that's how it is, after all? With something you love, you can focus.
Why it wasn't finished: my time was squeezed by work and shattered by emotional procrastination. How else to explain the online entertainment time aTimeLogger recorded?
- Plan an offline meetup (×)
Before the experiment began, I had already set the time, venue and theme for the event. Over these few days I came to feel it wasn't appealing. Up to this afternoon, I had thought of alternatives but wasn't confident in them. When I talked it over with close friends, they weren't excited at all. That hit me hard, and I almost gave up.
At first I assumed it was my perfectionist procrastination flaring up again. But when I talked with Yunlu, she thought what I found hard was actually very easy.
That is another new insight: procrastination triggered by difficulty may just come from being stuck in a dead end for the moment. Before the week is out, I may get this one done with help from my fellow sufferers. (Editor's note: Yes, we'll make it happen!)
- What did I hope to achieve with the five-day course?
Simple: just meet this week's goals. I also know time-management apps are hard to stick with, and I hoped I could really put them to effective use.
As the list above shows, I set 4 goals this week. They weren't hard, but some depended on third parties and chance, and I failed to complete 3 of them.
My to-do list in Excel has 68 entries (including items carried over from the day before and 7 added on the fly), of which 29 were postponed (including things put off on the first day but done on the second).
In other words, 3 of my 4 goals failed, and 40% of my tasks went undone.
As for the Pomodoro timer, it was basically useless.
aTimeLogger faithfully recorded all of it.
The day before yesterday, Datou told me: "Tara, I think this experiment doesn't work for either of us!"
"Why?"
"Because we both have work we have to get done. We can't procrastinate."
As far as work goes, I really haven't let a single task slip. It's how I earn my living, and procrastination has to bow to it. As far as my personal life goes, having lost most of it to work, I'm nearly beyond rescue.
At the end of this experiment, what gave me the greatest sense of achievement was finally finishing something I had put off for more than two years: making a list of everything I have put off so far.
The result was frightening. By the time I submitted this report, I had written down 166 items (and there are probably more).
Some are leftovers of procrastination; some are wishes and dreams I should have acted on long ago; some are promises to other people. Last winter solstice, for example, I promised a friend I would write a piece, and this year's winter solstice is almost here. Some are work-related and would make my work more efficient and better; some are very personal, everyday things, such as going to the wet market on weekends, which I haven't had time for in ages (a small thing that makes me happy).
Once I wrote them down, I felt as if I had set down a heavy load. I hadn't actually forgotten these things, but I hadn't quite dared to think about them, and that may be the main source of emotional procrastination.
The most important conclusion I drew this past week is that "working and living consciously" matters more than any tool or any amount of willpower.
As Yunlu said, forget about procrastination. It is neither an excuse nor a burden. Use your time consciously: do things when it's time to do them, and stop when it's time to stop. It sounds like a feel-good platitude, but think about it: in your whole life, how much of your time do you spend doing things consciously?
Whether it's using the Pomodoro method to focus for 25 minutes and remembering to stop for a 5-minute rest, or starting and stopping each aTimeLogger entry on time to see where the hours went; whether it's taking a meditation class to talk with yourself, or practicing yoga or diving to feel your breath and notice every movement of your body.
What matters in each case is knowing what you are doing. Most procrastinators lose their time in a daze.
Just as yoga helps you rediscover breathing you take for granted, beating procrastination, for me, means recovering an awareness of time. We are in too much of a hurry to move forward. Society and the people around us all move very fast, and many people fight procrastination only so they can become "successful people." Sometimes, in fact, slowing down gets you there faster.
For those who have already lost the will to beat procrastination, of course, none of this will work.
Swim a kilometer every day, and beating procrastination isn't that hard | Datou Jun, designer
The week went by fast. With this year's first heavy snow, the last day of the experiment has ended too.
The temperature dropped sharply, but that didn't stop me from swimming. As planned, I reached the gym at 9:40 and swam 1,000 meters.
Today's schedule wasn't packed, but plenty still came up to upset it, such as a last-minute meeting at a client's office and a creative session I had to join at short notice.
The busy week is over, and two things give me a real sense of achievement. First, I actually logged what I was doing every day for five days straight, and wrote a report every day. I actually finished this experiment!
When I first decided to take part, I thought, "This is easy!" "It's just jotting things down!" But over these five days, having to pull out my phone to log each new activity was tedious in itself, and I often felt lazy. So sticking with it proves, at the very least, that I have some willpower.
Second, I swam every day.
Swimming is already a habit for me. They say it takes 21 days to form a habit, but this week I never once complained or felt lazy about swimming, because if I can swim 1,000 meters every morning, what can't I get done?
Now whenever I arrive at the office after a swim, I make a point of casually letting slip that "I swam this morning," and my colleagues are amazed: "What's gotten into you? Are you rebooting your life? I can't believe it!" To me, that is the highest praise.
Editor's note: Datou Jun's report stops here because he was dragged into a meeting, and he still hadn't been let out by press time, so this is his summary for the day! Just remember that he got up early and photographed the ginkgo trees before autumn ended.
Today's Tips
- For severe procrastinators: write out the things you've been putting off, one by one. You may need a Pomodoro timer to stay focused. Use an Excel sheet, a Word document, a mind map, or a pen and a blank sheet of paper, whatever you're used to, and set aside an unbroken block of time to write down every item you've put off. You'll see what kind of world procrastination has left empty, and then you can start tackling the items one at a time.
- Don't try to make a perfect plan. Write a to-do list for the day before work, and check what got done before you leave. Keep at it; it really takes no more than 10 minutes.
- Before leaving work each day, clear your desktop and your downloads folder. It's a ritual of closure, and it also spares you the anxiety that comes when your computer descends into disorder. For me, at least, whether my desktop is tidy and whether my home is tidy are closely tied to my procrastination.
- Keeping up the appearance of "not procrastinating" for a short, intense stretch isn't very hard. But to keep doing one thing without letting up, you need a drive like "I have to do it" or "I'll die if I don't."
- Rather than reading all five days of our reports word for word (and maybe some other QDaily articles while you're at it), clear today's to-do items first. Tomorrow is the weekend. Don't let the weight of unfinished work ruin a weekend that's meant for rest.
- Which apps or tools you use doesn't matter at all. To practice the Pomodoro technique, your phone's built-in timer is enough, and the best to-do list tool is pen and paper. So dependence on methodology and indecision over tools are no excuse for failing to act.
Experiment reports
Following Cook's 4 a.m. wake-up to challenge my procrastination | Procrastination-Beating Lab Day 1
Procrastination fighter B drew tomatoes and lost to a last-minute meeting | Day 1
Procrastination fighter C, a planner who made yet another plan she didn't finish | Day 1
Does setting aside what you don't want to do count as a cure? | Procrastination-Beating Lab Day 4
The lab's final summary and follow-up report will arrive next week. Please stay tuned.
Translated from the original QDaily article. Original publication date retained.