Dear Helen,
I have a recurring issue: I have tasks I want to complete—but, instead of jumping in, I procrastinate with mindless (though mostly enjoyable) things like social media/YouTube clips. Eventually I realize it’s late in the day and I scramble to do the tasks. This leads to accomplishing things late into the evening, leaving little or no wind-down time. Typically, I’ll have promised myself a fun TV show or movie once I’ve completed the task, so it’s a disappointment when I don’t have the time for it. I think I’m a self-fulfilling prophecy, though; I’ve done this so many times, or have tasks take longer than expected, so I delay the tasks because I know once I start, there’s no fun/relaxing time at the end. Been doing this for years. Any advice on how to break the cycle?
Thank you!
Unfulfilled Promise
Dear Unfulfilled Promise,
What a great question! It really speaks to a dynamic that I think a lot of us create with our time—and then struggle to understand when we decide it isn't working for us anymore (or when we realize it never was).
There are a handful of things I noticed in your question—and I'll point out all of them to see if there's some insight lurking there for you—but the main takeaway is this: You're not procrastinating.
What I see you doing is putting your wind-down time first and your task completion second.
Now, most people would call this procrastination—but the fact of the matter is, I'm not sure that label does anything for anyone except pathologize a perfectly normal and reasonable order of operations. It's like eating your dessert first! Who says you can't? (Diet culture, that's who! A terribly insidious and harmful thing, if you ask me. But that's another newsletter altogether.) It's valid to, as my husband says, "pay yourself first"—that is, do the activity that brings you joy and restores balance within you before doing the thing(s) that needs to get done, but might not be particularly enjoyable.
Something I noticed in your question, though, is that you do actually prefer a little wind-down time before turning in for the night. So, that's a clue. However you spend your time throughout the day, you're someone for whom a window of TV- or movie-watching is the ultimate nightcap.
But it sounds like you're making a trade-off here. I don't get the sense that the social media perusal/YouTube clip-watching is truly how you'd like to unwind. It's a default habit. A time-filler. Maybe even an avoidance tactic (though, again, I wouldn't call any of it procrastination because that just sounds deathly serious and nothing you're doing here merits such gravity). The problem* is that it's eating up the possibility of more pleasurable wind-down activity at the very end of the day.
You say yourself these are tasks you want to complete. You might not be looking forward to the specific work that's involved (if you were, you'd likely dive right into it, dessert-first style), but it sounds to me like you're definitely wanting to knock out these specific items.
Here's something to consider: You could try to change this habit (by deleting your social media apps, by putting a timer on your phone, by giving yourself some kind of reward each time you choose to complete your tasks first), but even if you do nothing, you can rely on a built-in guidance system. There's proof of it in what you wrote to me.
What am I referring to?
Well, at some point, seemingly without fail, you decide to put down your phone and deal with your tasks. Whether it takes 20 minutes or two hours of aimless scrolling, you reach an internal limit: Your brain determines enough is enough, and you move onto the next activity. You don't have to do anything to make it happen.
Now, sure, your built-in guidance system might not be operating on a particular timetable—it perks up when it perks up, and that's when you're prompted to move on from what you call the "mindless" activity of browsing social media—but it works without any interference from you.
The data shows that doing it this way means you're likely to run out of time for your favorite wind-down activities at the day's end, but still, it's good to note that the system does work without your having to muscle through making a change.
Which brings me to my last point: Try doing your task(s) first. Just try it once. We're not looking to revise how you live your life from here on out, we're just playing around with your schedule on this one occasion. An experiment to see what happens and to see if you like the outcome better than that of your current system. Do it in the name of data collection.
And, of course, let me know how it goes! I'd love to share your follow-up with my other readers.
Love,
Helen
*I say "problem" only because it's something that isn't working for you, not because anything's actually wrong here. We're so quick to think of problems as horrible things, when, in fact, they're really excellent prompts to fiddle around with a system to get the results we want.