In Defense of #TeamDisorganized: Rise Up, Ye Procrastinators, Night Owls, and Easily Distracted Souls
/From the time we're young children, we receive direct and subtle messages day in and day out that we should strive to be early risers, keep our rooms and desks clean, never put off until tomorrow what can be accomplished today, plan ahead, and so on. I think we would all agree that these traits really are outstanding characteristics to have. How could there be a downside to being organized?
However, you may find you’re still struggling mightily with adopting these traits at 22, thirtysomething, fortyesque, fiftyaffiliated, or older.
Welcome to #TeamDisorganized, and it’s concurrent state, #HotMessAdulting. If you’ve been feeling down about yourself because of all the information out there that says something is wrong with you if you haven’t gotten these things mastered, this post is for you.
Photo: Rob Bye
So, what exactly happened to you? Did you just “fail to launch?” Are you lazy? Are you really a hot mess?
You’re fine. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you.
You’re not a loser because you've always hated waking up at 6:30 a.m., or because it feels unnatural for you to wake at that time no matter how early you go to bed. You're not doomed to sell scrap metal out of a shopping cart in a seedy downtown alley just because you can never find anything on your desk or in your briefcase/pocketbook.
Luckily, if you know for sure (or suspect) that these “grown up” traits are a legitimate struggle for you, there are ways to mitigate the negative effects and get on with life.
It does take some work — and some reality checks you may not be ready for — but you can absolutely find balance.
Before I jump into that, let me get something out of the way. The philosopher Aristotle is credited with saying "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” There is certainly an argument that it’s better, or actually easier, to put effort into changing “negative” habits.
For instance, if you hate getting up early but desperately want to be an early riser, you can in fact learn how to make such a change and gradually come to embrace the crack of dawn. There’s nothing wrong with that approach, and many people choose to unlearn habits they believe to be holding them back.
That’s not what I’m focused on in this post. Today, I’m talking about making peace with the current snapshot of you and learning how to succeed with what you’re made of right now.
A lot of people flounder professionally as they chase certain behavior ideals, believing they are mandatory for professional (and personal) success. I’m suggesting that people who find themselves playing for #TeamDisorganized, feeling out of control and exhausted with what feels like swimming upstream, might benefit from a crucial attitude shift that can help them start “winning” at life’s daily tasks.
Assess the situation
Photo: rawpixel
For starters, let’s acknowledge that the business world is based roughly on a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, 52-week working schedule (specific to your time zone). Of course, you may be self-employed (yayyyy!), work for a multinational corporation that flexes to accommodate all time zones, or you may work in a country that has a nationwide midday break or August vacation. The point is there are business hours that serve to organize most of our working lives.
With that as context, you need to honestly chronicle how you live, work and move through your day. We spend at least a third of the day working — and work sustains the rest of life financially — so you’ll want to pay particularly close attention to recognizing your work style.
Do this for about a week. You want to get a solid work week AND weekend in your log. Indicate what time you go to sleep and wake up each day. Take note of how you feel throughout the day, depending on the hours slept. Note your most alert times of day as well as your most lethargic.
Be granular. You may be surprised at the nuances you find. Also, this is not a time to beat yourself up — it’s just a list. Don’t agonize over whether it’s hand-written, typed on your smartphone, or documented in an email. Just start paying attention and keep track.
Stop hating yourself
You now have a snapshot of your habits, defining characteristics, likes, dislikes and work style. Let it sink in without judgment; this who you are right now.
Photo: sydney Rae
For some people this process may be liberating; just getting it all documented can feel like progress. For other people, especially if you've already thought about the behavior ideals that have eluded you, such a raw cataloging may evoke feelings of remorse, shame, or guilt. You may feel exposed and vulnerable. If so, try to resist negative self-talk or cynical opinions about yourself. This assessment is progress! It's a huge step. It helps you begin to gain control over things by objectively identifying the behaviors that need to be balanced.
I do recognize that it’s not easy to shake the mean, self-defeating thoughts and labels we’ve been conditioned to associate with not mastering certain habits and behaviors. Just remember: you are in control of how you feel about all of this, and it’s all about learning what makes you tick.
Let me share a story.
I am a recovering procrastinator. There, I’ve said it. I have the best of intentions, and there is no one alive who could credibly call me lazy, but sometimes I find myself panicked and frantic, racing against a deadline. I usually get myself together in the nick of time (sometimes with excellent results - which I’ll get to later), but I have absolutely procrastinated myself into some awful mishaps.
For years I was ashamed of my procrastinating ways. I legitimately wondered whether I was simply cursed with the inability to gauge how early to start on things, or simply an embodiment of Murphy’s Law.
I distinctly remember pulling over on a random street in Delaware one morning, collapsing onto my steering wheel in a sobbing heap after missing a job interview because I’d gotten hopelessly lost on the way there. Now, I DID actually have my morning planned out well in advance, but as is the way with #TeamDisorganized, something went awry and I left about 15 minutes later than planned. Even so, I still had enough time to drive to the interview and arrive with some cushion — but not enough time to account for getting lost. And not enough time to account for construction detours (which also happened that morning). And definitely not enough time to identify which of the identical office buildings WITH NO NUMBERS VISIBLE FROM THE ROAD I was supposed to park near (yep, that happened too).
When I realized I’d be late, I of course called the hiring manager to let him know, but the damage was done.
Now, you may be thinking, “Well… that was a colossally horrendous chain of events that could happen to anyone; you couldn’t have predicted it.” This is true, and who knows if leaving on time would have meant I wouldn’t get lost or run into construction. Hard to say, and ultimately, it doesn’t matter anymore.
The watershed moment for me was when I confided my shame about procrastinating to my mother — a woman of countless accomplishments and talents who rises with the birds and literally makes her own clothes. She merrily replied that she too was a procrastinator (hhwhatt?), always had been (you lie!), and suggested that some people may actually need the pressure of a deadline to elicit their best work and clearest thinking (shut.the.front.door.).
I didn't like the idea that I was that person, but I was fascinated by the notion that my procrastination might not be random… or definitive proof that I was lazy. (I was also curiously relieved to know that my own mother knew the #procrastinationstruggle.)
As is my way, I did my research, and the truth is, humans are “wired” to procrastinate. (Triumph! It’s not even my fault #becausescience.) We all do it to some degree, but about 25% of us, including me, can’t leave well enough alone. We’re what you call “chronic procrastinators.”
This presented a conflict for me; on one hand, some of my biggest wins have emerged after an extended period of procrastinating; I wrote an account-winning PR proposal on zero sleep, drafted a standing ovation-inducing speech for a client in an hour, and came up with some slam-dunk PR campaign strategies in my elevator ride to a pitch meeting. And I didn’t struggle; the clarity I experienced in those moments was dang transcendental.
But before you drop everything and embrace procrastination, understand something…
Procrastinating clearly brings its own perils. Chronic procrastinators stress out friends and family who depend on them. In the realm of personal disappointment, waiting until the day you have to catch a flight to pack might cause you to arrive at your departure gate too late to board. Professionally speaking, chronic procrastination is a job-killer. Hitting snooze on your alarm clock too many times may make you "pink-slip late" to work.
There’s also some real sciency-science indicating that my mother may have been wrong about the deadline thing. It seems that most of the time, people don’t really work as well under pressure as they think. Womp, womp.
PLUS, that clarity I talked about doesn’t happen every time. Just this past Spring I was working on a super-important proposal that had to be uploaded to an online submission portal. I waited so long to work on it that when I was done, I literally only had seconds left to submit it. My fingers were shaking so bad from the panic that I almost couldn’t click the proper button. What if my wifi went out, or the page loaded too slowly, or my upload didn’t go through the first time?
THAT was neither euphoric nor transcendental. THAT was some B.S.
Yet, here I am. I don’t want to be a procrastinator, but if I’m honest, that’s who I am a lot of the time. So, what’s my point?
Oh ho! I see what you did there!
Photo: Eye for Ebony
My point is that in appreciation for the science behind procrastination, and rather than getting caught up in a woe-is-me spin, I now leverage the knowledge that I tend to procrastinate. I actively compensate for that habit.
For me, that was the key; in recognition of my reality, identify the habit, and compensate for it. Realizing I could do this this was like winning the philosophical Powerball. This is the attitude shift I was talking about earlier.
Find your balance
Now, it’s time to think about, and commit to, mitigating or balancing actions you can take to keep your default behaviors from holding you back or inconveniencing others.
Nota bene — this step may require some trial and error, and the mitigating/balancing process that works for one person won’t necessary work for someone else. You may even find that your process for finding balance flies in the face of what researchers recommend. Here are examples of a few go-to actions for me:
Problem 1: Procrastination
Stumbling Block: Busy work, followed by guilt loops
Chronic procrastinators sometimes choose to do mundane things like dishes or gross things like cleaning the oven instead of an important task that really needs to get done. Then we feel aching guilt about not doing the important stuff.
Certain procrastinating behavior, like oven cleaning or hanging wallpaper, really may be just a case of you BS-ing. However, some scientists suggest “mindless” tasks like dish-washing, walking the dog or picking up around your office/cube/home actually have some value and put you on the right track. Performing tasks like that when we need to be taking on something more important can actually be quite helpful.
Why? Because they don’t require a lot of focus and provide a sense of accomplishment when they’re complete. To be fair, there are also studies claiming this is just a cruel bit of self-deception. However, for some hardcore procrastinators, that sense of accomplishment feeds the desire to feel like they’ve made progress on something and eliminates small (but necessary) tasks from the mental to-do list that materializes when they’re avoiding a big job.
Best of all, there is evidently a part of our brain that acknowledges we’re making a trade off of sorts; it knows what we’re supposed to be doing, and actually devotes background brain power to organizing thoughts in preparation for the real task. And THAT is why I sometimes receive a clarity vortex when I finally get to work. My brain quietly hooked it all up. Either that, or I’m an arousal procrastinator.
Solution that works for ME: When I catch myself procrastinating, I embrace the busy work on my to-do list (which I keep in Evernote, by the way). I find that it drastically shortens my procrastination time and often helps me approach my real work calmly, with organized thoughts.
Problem 2: Perfectionism/Maximizing
Stumbling Blocks: Reluctance to start OR finish tasks; spending absurd amounts of time “improving” on tasks
Surprise, surprise… procrastinators are often perfectionists too. I’m not a classic perfectionist. I don’t tend to give up on difficult tasks, I’m not ashamed of making mistakes, I don’t shy away from things I can’t do flawlessly, and my inner voice isn’t especially self-critical. I’m really more of a “maximizer” – someone fixated on the optimal decision, ideal conditions, and best possible choice. A psychiatrist I trust also told me I’m more likely somewhere between Adaptive (healthy) Perfectionism and self-regulated OCD.
All I know is, I have been known to spend an hour writing and re-drafting a simple email response. I’ve spent a half-day working on one dumb Powerpoint slide. It has taken me 20 minutes to edit the grammar on an Instagram caption. Hell, I’ve been picking at this blog post for nearly a year.
In its most simple manifestation, perfectionism is the inability to realize when your continued efforts (on whatever — a speech, a painting, a shrimp scampi recipe) will yield diminishing returns. Peter Bregman of the Harvard Business Review says, "Perfectionists have a hard time starting things and an even harder time finishing them. At the beginning, it’s they who aren’t ready. At the end it’s their product that’s not.”
Peter, say it louder for the perfectionists in the back. #literallymylife
Admitting you’re a perfectionist is an interesting “trap,” too. People think you’re humblebragging and being self-effacing about having high standards.
Yeah, no. That’s not it at all.
Perfectionism isn’t an asset. It’s burdensome and stressful. You feel like you’re never “done.” It’s hard to delegate. You’re susceptible to the “I’ll rest/stop/breathe/celebrate when the job is done” mentality. What’s worse, you’re actively aware of the futility of it WHILE you’re being a perfectionist.
Solution that works for ME: One of my core traits is pragmatism, and luckily for me, it (eventually) prevails in most situations. Consequently, there is a “tipping point” at which I realize my perfectionist and maximizer tendencies are making me waste a colossal amount of time on a task and degrading the quality of the finished product. Through mindfulness practices, I’ve learned to reach that tipping point much quicker.
Inspiration & Resources
This post was all about mitigating the potential fallout from certain so-called bad habits. But as I mentioned, another approach is to replace them with new and different habits you feel better about.
Judson Brewer is a psychiatrist and addiction specialist whose work focuses on mindfulness techniques that can help you kick all kinds of cravings. Check out his 2015 TEDMED Talk, "A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit."
