INSIGHTS (on leadership/self-leadership)
One of the sneakiest things that blocks you from accomplishing what you want is a dastardly form of procrastination known as “procrastivity.” It’s an idea catching hold in productivity circles and was recently defined in this Forbes article as follows:
“‘Procrastivity’ is the act of engaging in marginally productive, low-stakes tasks to rationalize and delay tackling high-stakes, cognitively or emotionally demanding work. It’s the subtle, insidious trap of feeling busy without being effective. It’s far more deceptive than traditional procrastination (which is often associated with scrolling social media or binge-watching) because it feels like work.”
Author Luciana Paulise recommends four strategies to escape this trap (edited here for brevity).
1. Identify Your High-Priority Tasks. Similar to the Eisenhower Matrix, organize your tasks in one of four buckets: Do Now, Do Later, Delegate, Delete. Timebox “Do Now” tasks on your calendar first.
2. Practice the 10-Minute Rule. When you feel the sudden impulse to check your phone, clean your inbox, or switch to a low-stakes task, commit to waiting just 10 more minutes before giving in. This creates a “mental speed bump.” By the time those 10 minutes pass, the initial urge to distract yourself has usually subsided, allowing you to maintain your flow and push through the resistance of a challenging project.
3. Schedule “Administrative Batches.”Don’t let low-stakes tasks bleed into high-value time. Designate specific, limited blocks of time (like 45 minutes at the end of the day) specifically for “procrastivity tasks” like email organization or filing. These are “Do Later” tasks; they should be written down and deferred to their scheduled time.
4. Differentiate Between “Busy” and “Effective.” Before moving to the next low-stakes task, ask yourself:
- Is this task the highest-value activity I could be doing right now?
- Does completing this move my most important goal forward?
If the answer is no, you’re simply trading high-impact work for low-impact comfort.
IMPERFECTIONS (a mistake many make)
We all do it – reach for the phone without thinking to pass the time or distract the brain. You rarely feel better after giving in to this modern-day time suck, right? So, here are three psychology-backed strategies to break the habit of mindless, unproductive phone scrolling.
1. Resist “Immediate Relief Syndrome.” Psychologists say we don’t just grab our phones for information, we grab them for emotional relief. We want a micro-escape from the boredom, anxiety, or nervousness we’re experiencing. Key is to recognize why you’re reaching for your phone yet again, as an emotional escape, and to choose instead to deal with that emotion in the moment.
You can do this by naming what you’re feeling, like “I’m feeling stressed.” Once you name the emotion you’re feeling, it instantly begins to lose its hold over you, so you can focus on steps to address the emotion you’re feeling (other than escapism).
2. Set realistic phone boundaries. If you reach for the phone every five minutes, committing to check it just once a day won’t work. Instead, assign times for phone usage in ways that are close to your normal patterns. For example, if you tend to constantly reach for your phone, assign four times to check it: when you first wake up, mid-morning, late afternoon, and before you go to bed. The idea is to create sustainable patterns.
3. Identify replacement behaviors. What will you do in those moments when you want to reach for your phone, but you resist? Go for a walk? Read a few pages of a book? Establish these replacement behaviors as replacement habits.
IMPLEMENTATION (one research-backed strategy, tip, or tool)
Here’s a sad truth: too many companies beat down extraordinary individuals and make them feel ordinary (at best). Sometimes it’s individual managers with ridiculous standards or astonishingly low EQ that slowly squeeze the self-confidence out of the employee. Other times, it’s an entire culture that values all the wrong things. The sources of potential beatdown are numerous.
We’re at DEFCON one here folks, a DEFlated CONfidence of the highest danger level. When you can feel your company grinding you down, remember any of these five mantras.
1. Your differences make you greater than, not lesser than. You exacerbate your feelings of inadequacy by viewing what makes you different from others as a liability. But it’s that difference that makes you greater than, not lesser than. Take pride in your different strengths and strengthen them to increase their applicability and extent to which they’re appreciated.
2. Your company doesn’t define you. What you stand for does. You’re so much more than how your bosses say you’re doing. The much bigger whole comes from your values, your beliefs, your purpose. Who you are is so much more important than what you are, so focus on living up to your genuine self as much as you can.
3. Go for authenticity, not approval. When you seek approval, you’re seeking external validation, which is an empty victory at best, and elusive and confidence-eroding at worst. You don’t need validation–you just need to be the valid you. Fall in love with your internal qualities, not external accomplishments. Self-confidence comes from self-congruency.
4. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Similarly, you get to choose who criticizes you. Everyone else can go pound sand.
5. Stop undermining yourself. Self-deprecation is one thing, self-defamation is another. Don’t lower others’ expectations of you by doing it for them. Talking yourself down (or excessively up) both smack of insecurity. Avoid making sweeping, negative generalizations about yourself from one isolated incident. Stop the beat-down behaviors and engage in the lift-up behaviors.
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