The Procrastination Fight: Boosting Motivation

As leaders, I know we don’t talk a lot about the areas in our professional lives where we struggle. Or at least not out loud. One struggle for me through the years has been procrastination. Oh, the killer of great progress, ideas, projects, actions, and improvements. And this doesn’t have to just revolve around your professional life. It will usually impact your personal life too.

This is going to be a 4 part series on the main reasons we procrastinate and how to overcome those obstacle. Now as different as we all are, my literature review and lived experiences have proven to me over and over again, if I can control my procrastination, I am more effective as a leader. Boosting your leadership and effectiveness is crucial to your organization’s success and your future growth.

So in our Procrastination Fight, the first area we are doing to deal with his motivation. I decided to tackle this challenge first because with the other 3 areas we will deal with in this series, motivation is the one behavior with a viscous cycle of ups and downs. The emotional success and failure we feel directly and aggressively impacts our motivation in all areas. So getting a handle on our motivation in accomplishing tasks is paramount.

Motivation is impacted by many variables. Some within our control, others are not. But a hallmark of a leaders is learning to influence those variables in your control and to negate the others. Key to keeping your motivation moving is to keep focused on your goals.

I have talked with many leaders who talk about losing their motivation. This motivation could be to finish a project, tackle a challenge, work on their degree or certification, or just to move their unit forward. Bar none, when I ask the goal for why they want to accomplish the task, those with no motivation cannot speak to a goal for doing the task.

Without a goal, there can be no accomplishment. With no goal, there is no reason to move forward. And with no reason to accomplish something and to move forward, then there is no motivation.

It may seem simple, but that is truth. Over and over again leaders lose sight of the goal for which they are working towards. Some it’s because the goal has not been determined or it is too vague. For many organizations, I have seen where there is no real stated goal and people are just “working”. It’s the same when you join a committee or team at work. Many times sadly, no one has a clear goal for what the group is doing.

Additionally, there is the challenge if the goal is not “yours”. It’s not personal. Oh, I know many times for my organization the “goal” was given to me with no discussion. And at some point you have to take on the goal as “yours”. You have to connect the importance of the goal and make sure you have buy-in to drive towards accomplishing the task. The result of working towards a goal you have not made personal…you lose momentum easily.

Another challenge is when your goal does not have enough influence on you to make you feel the importance of the task. Though similar to not making it personal, you also have to add importance to the task. When you understand the goal you are working towards and then you give it importance in your work life, then you find the motivation follows. It has to mean something to you. This part of motivation can take some time. You’ll need to critically evaluate the task at hand and put it into perspective of importance to increase your motivation to move the task forward.

It’s not a real secret to those around me I struggle at times with motivation to maintain a healthy balance between working out and eating healthy. I understand the importance of keeping myself healthy, of choosing the correct foods to eat, and to ensure I keep that balance in focus…daily. When I find myself struggling with the motivation to stay the course on a healthy lifestyle, I also find myself with no goal and no personal reason to stay focused on the goal.

I use the same approach to my motivation for my leadership. Redefine or identify a goal for the task I am responsible. Then I need to make it a personal reason why the goal is important for me. Then motivation usually follows.

With all that is said, let me make a caveat. It’s not always easy. Downright almost impossible at times. Sometimes it is a struggle, long term at times, to maintain motivation. The influences on you as a leader will impact your time, energy, and focus. All of that drains on your motivation as well. But like the struggle I have with maintaining a healthy lifestyle, you may have to work just as hard to maintain motivation for tasks at work. You need to know what you are doing is important and serves a purpose for your leadership.

A final point on motivation for your leadership to avoid procrastination. It’s important for you to be effective as a leader. Being effective means taking care of your responsibilities. So not to stall your momentum, you need to take a personal responsibility attitude towards protecting and guarding your motivation. You need to make this a priority  when you find motivation slipping away. Because ultimately that is what happens when you procrastinate.

It can be insidious. You may not realize how far you have lost your motivation till it is gone. Then you need to step up your leadership character. You need to find your goal, you need to make it personal, and then you need to gather the strength and courage to bring back your motivation. It’s your responsibility as the leader.

Our next 3 posts in this series will tackle other issues which we hope will help you battle the leadership time taker of procrastination. You have too much to accomplish to let this disease infect your leadership. We’re taking the fight to procrastination this time by boosting your motivation.

Leading with you!

Dean

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