The Procrastination Fight: Fear of Known

We are continuing our series on the impact of procrastination on leaders. Daily, leaders’ time is vied for by a multitude of tasks. The overwhelming feeling leaders get when the tasks to accomplish outnumber time available can cause leaders to become inefficient. Procrastination is one behavior, a tool, in this chest of destruction.

In our first segment of this series, we discussed The Procrastination Fight by Boosting Motivation. We determined the impact of motivation on fighting procrastination means you need to identify a goal for the task you are going to tackle, you need to own the goal, and the goal needs to have importance to you. In our second part, The Procrastination Fight: Fear of the Unknown, we talked about the mental obstacle, the “Unknown”, which stops you from making decisions. You lose opportunities, you lose options, you lose momentum, and you lose impact and effectiveness.

If you have not read those, I suggest going back and read them.

Our third part of this four part series in our efforts to battle procrastination is dealing with our fear of the “Known”. The fear of the known deals with obstacles we know we are going to face and we let this “known’ obstacle stand in our way of accomplishing our goals.

I firmly believe in taking care of your mind, body, and spirit. One way I have chosen to keep healthy is to use running as an option for keeping my physical health. Though I am a casual runner, I don’t particularly like to run in real cold weather and I surely don’t run in rain! I do find running as a time to think through issues. I also debate in my head some challenges going on in my work and look for an innovative or unique perspective to change things.

In my current location, I’ve discovered that my route has the opportunity to run into a strong headwind. So much headwind that at times it’s like running backwards. So one morning as I was getting up, all I could think about was the wind I was going to have to run into to accomplish my task of my morning exercise. And I ended up not going.

Later in the day, I was frustrated I had not done what was required of me to stay healthy. I figured I would just exercise that evening to make up for missing my morning run. By the end of the day, I was exhausted. That evening it was too hot, the next evening my knee hurt. I knew the headwind was going to be there every morning, and the fear of the known, the headwind, began to create a pattern of procrastination in my actions.

In leadership, we create the same patterns of procrastination when we don’t face head-on the “known” obstacles in our work. Those obstacles can take on the form of another leader, a policy, a process, an attitude or culture. Facing the fear of the known, moving beyond it, is needed for leaders to break this negative behavior that is rendering them ineffective.

When the Fear of the Known starts to take control of a leader’s procrastination actions, many times, they are not aware. This procrastination manifests itself at times as rationalization for why there is no movement toward accomplishment. Many justify inaction with a multitude of reasons which sound plausible or actually could be valid. However, a hard thing for leaders to acknowledge is the reason why they are not moving forward is the fact they are avoiding a “known” obstacle and they are not addressing it.

Let’s look at 3 steps to help you through, to help you deal with the Fear of the Known in battling procrastination.

1. Identify: When facing a task and finding you are not making movement, as in Part 1, look at your motivation. But this time, look at your motivation for why you are not making progress. The “why” line of questioning should begin. Ask yourself why over and over again until you come down to the root of your inaction. Identify why you are not making progress, then move. For leaders, this can be the fact the way forward is blocked by an internal or external policy. It may be that the person you have to work with on the solution is difficult to work with to solve the problem. It could be the organizational culture on this topic makes it a challenge to accomplish. You need to first though, identify what the “Known” is if you are going to go forward.

For me and my running issue, the “Known” turned out to be the extra effort it took me to do my run when there were heavy headwind days. That extra effort caused me not to be able to enjoy my run and let my mind wander and think. The extra effort forced me to focus more on the running and less on my enjoyment.

2. Engage: Once you have identified your “Known”, then you must engage with it to be successful. Engagement will take on the form of what needs to be done to make it through the obstacle. Work on a policy change, build up your leadership courage and collaborate with the leader who is difficult, or you may have to start with lower level successes to help change culture. Some times you just have to do something, as in my example, just go and run anyway. You never let the “Known” variable control your actions. You meet it head-on. A leader will need to make plans to remove the “Known’s” impact on leadership action and success.
3. Action: Finally, once you have identified the obstacle and you have engaged, then you have the final action of working through the “Known” or giving up. In leadership, your choice of action impacts the outcome. You can look at your obstacle, the “Known” and let it continue to control you. In essence, you have given up. You can allow it to prevent you from moving forward and accomplishing your goals. Or you can decide to work through the obstacle to reach your goals. The opportunity to make things happen so the obstacle doesn’t control you. The bottom line, you either accept the obstacle as unmovable and do nothing or you change something and reach your goals.

In my struggle with running in my current location, as simple as this example is, I could easily have stopped running because I didn’t want to engage in my “Known” obstacle. But I identified the “Known”, I engaged in addressing my “Known.” In this case, I just admitted it was going to be a part of my current situation and decided to change my attitude and not let the headwind be the reason I didn’t run. It was ultimately more important for me to run then it was to not run.

We will finish this series with our next post. I have found in many situations where I have procrastinated, the “Known” variable was always known, but I did nothing with it to change the situation. Many times I was less than effective or not at all, or I just did nothing at all. None of those options got me closer to goal accomplishment. In my fight to stop procrastination, in dealing with the “Known” variable, you need to identify it, engage it, and then you either accept the obstacle and procrastinate, or you change something, move on, and be a more effective leader.

Leading with you,

Dean

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