Why is it that we procrastinate on simple tasks like cleaning up the house or paying a few bills?

In most cases, procrastination is at its worst when a task will require a longer period of effort before the payoff of a feeling of completion is reached.

If you could sit down and pay a single bill and mentally cross that item off your to-do list for the day, you would be less likely to procrastinate.

But if you get busy with something else and put off paying the bills for a few weeks, the task becomes larger, and your mind begins to perceive the task as something that will not yield a rapid feeling of completion.

The same sort of thing tends to happen with cleaning the house.  The longer you go without cleaning, the more difficult it becomes to motivate yourself to tackle the job.

It’s not that pulling out the checkbook and mailing a few bills (or paying them online) really feels all that bad.  Getting out the broom and sweeping the kitchen floor isn’t such a terrible thing that we should dread the activity.

So why do we start to dread cleaning the house or paying the bills or any other task when it becomes a longer task?

Again, the answer is quite simple.

We have an aversion to putting forth effort unless our mind can readily perceive a reward (in this case the feeling of completion).

The longer the task will take, the more we slip into a perspective of the task that reinforces the procrastination formula.

It seems ridiculous that our minds responds so strongly to a factor that makes so little sense.

But we are wired to automatically and unconsciously assess the odds for getting a positive feeling from anything we pour our energy into.

When it appears to our mind that we will not get a positive feeling right away from working on cleaning the house (since the job has gotten to a point where it could not be finished all at once) our instincts tell us to avoid the activity.

Here’s the solution.

Make yourself do a small, manageable piece of the task lasting around 10 minutes.

If your house has become an absolute mess, you may need to spend the 10 minutes on a single room, preferably the messiest room in the house.

If vacuuming is the first order of priority, vacuum as much as you can for 10 minutes and then stop for the day knowing you will return to clean for another 10 minutes tomorrow.

By following through on this schedule day after day, you will break the procrastination cycle because you will see measurable changes in the orderliness of your house after each short segment of effort.

Your mind will quickly unlearn the dread that came from thinking of the task as a never ending point of effort with no immediate reward.

Apply this method anywhere in your life and tweak it to make it work.

You can shrink a task to a more manageable size by putting a time limit on the amount of time you will work on the task, or by breaking the task down into chunks.

Need to get out of debt?

It will be easier to start digging your way out if you start by setting aside $5.00 a week to pay off a debt.  By getting started you will unlearn the procrastination habit and make it easier to bump that up to $10.00 a week.

Keep bumping up the number until you are rapidly paying down your debt.

Soon, you will be up to saving 10% of your monthly income by very gradually reducing your lifestyle expenses.

Whatever you find yourself procrastinating on, break it down into something smaller and more manageable and you will find it easier to get going.

-Dr. Todd Snyder