How executives stop procrastinating and get more done

If you want to stop procrastinating but don’t know how to start, try these four strategies used by executives: put action before motivation, stop isolating yourself, visualize outcomes, and hire an executive assistant.

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Table of contents

• Why can’t you stop procrastinating? 
• How do executives stop procrastinating?
• What happens if you don’t stop procrastinating?

Why can’t you stop procrastinating? 

Procrastination is a very real struggle everyone has faced at least once: postponing something from your to-do list over and over because you don’t have the mental capacity to deal with it at the moment. The worst part is that the more you postpone something, the worse you feel about it. The initial feeling of dread is now accompanied by feeling stressed about not having completed the work you were supposed to have finalized already. 

Postponing one of your pending projects won’t make it disappear, so how can you deal with this behavior? The first step to stop procrastinating is to identify what’s triggering that reaction. We have narrowed the possibilities down to four: Do any of these resonate with what you’re experiencing? 

1. Fear of failure

The fear of failure is deeply connected to suffering from imposter syndrome. None of us wants to feel like we crashed and burned, nobody wants to feel like a fraud. Keep in mind, though: there’s a big difference between going for it despite uncertainty and not even trying because we’re too scared to fail. 

Executives at startups, for instance, tend to climb the ladder quickly and find themselves leading global teams in their early 30s. Having that amount of responsibility, both to your team and to the company, can make you doubt yourself, planting negative thoughts in your mind: “I’m not ready”, “I don’t know how to do that”, “I’m the wrong person for the job”. 

Being afraid is only natural, but don’t let your negative self-talk shape your reality. To push through the fear of failing, avoid going too deep into your thoughts. Instead, state the facts: “I was hired for this role”, “I was promoted because of my merits”, and “The feedback I’ve received is very positive”. If others believed in you, don’t bet against yourself. Take their word for it. 

1. Tension with leadership 

There are many reasons why people quit their jobs: the desire for a professional pivot, a lack of growth opportunities, and a lack of fit with their boss are common ones. Feeling tension with your CEO can make you feel disengaged from the work you’re producing and cause you to procrastinate more and more. 

There are many reasons why you may have growing tension with your CEO. Maybe they’re too aggressive, maybe they disregard all your ideas without even really considering them, or maybe you feel like they’re leading the company in the wrong direction. Whatever the reason is, that tension can build to a point where you simply think: “Why should I listen to them?” 

If you’ve gotten to this point, schedule a direct conversation with them or get HR involved so you can find a solution together. Make sure to explain what’s bothering you and identify what you need to stop feeling that tension. 

1. Overwhelm or task aversion

Procrastinating is not the same as being a procrastinator. Procrastinators struggle with putting off responsibilities on a regular basis, maybe even daily; whereas, procrastinating can be sporadic for other people. If you don’t normally postpone your to-do list, but have found yourself pushing one specific project further down the road recently, there might be a clear reason: that one task is too overwhelming. 

A task or a project becomes overwhelming when it seems too big to tackle. When you have a daunting project in front of you, you don’t even know where to start, or how much time to allocate to it. The problem resides in the fact that you are looking at a project as a whole instead of taking a moment to identify every step that will take you to the finish line. 

If that project is to find your new CMO, don’t just write it down on a Post-it as “Find CMO”. Instead, break that task into little steps, such as: define the role and responsibilities, write a compelling job description, post the opening across your socials, screen candidates, make an offer, and put an onboarding plan together. Also, make sure you allocate time in your calendar to complete each of these steps, so every day’s task feels attainable, and the challenge is less daunting. 

1. Lack of motivation

Not feeling as motivated as you did when you just started this job is perfectly normal. Gone are the days when people retired from the first job they had; in fact, the tenure for startup employees is only two years. If the reason you can’t stop procrastinating is that you don’t care anymore, it’s time to take a pulse check and make a decision. 

If you have a job you used to love, and you’re not interested in looking for new opportunities, find ways to remember why you said yes to the offer in the first place. What did you enjoy most about your job in the early days? How is this job helping you accomplish your purpose? What have you learned from this job? 

If your lack of motivation comes from getting used to what your job gives you, make a list of all the things you like to fall back in love with your role. But if the lack of motivation comes from a different place – maybe you feel that you’re not growing anymore, or you genuinely don’t like what you do – it may be time to cut the cord and look for new opportunities.

Do any of these reasons resonate with how you’re feeling? If so, the solution might be among one of these four ways executives have found to stop procrastinating:

How do executives stop procrastinating?

• Put action before motivation 

You may think you need to wait for motivation to come before you can start working, but it’s actually the other way around. Action triggers motivation, which means you need to start in order to get motivated enough to finish. Just open that doc and give it a working title; just open your email and review the first candidate’s resume. All that matters is that you start. The first motion will keep you going. 

• Stop isolating yourself

As an executive, you’re probably the one in charge of entire projects, or you’re the person making the last call, which means you end up producing a ton of work all by yourself. The bad news? Isolating yourself makes procrastinating much easier. If you’re the only person involved in a project from the beginning to the end, no one sees what you’re doing or how long it’s taking you. So bring at least one person into every project. 

If you need to put an entire report together, have a team member take care of putting it in a deck.  That way, you know someone is waiting for you to finish so they can do their job. That person will act as an accountability partner and ensure you meet the deadlines you committed to. 

• Visualize the outcome

Something as simple as visualizing the results of your work can help you get rid of the hesitation to start. Just think about how tomorrow, next week, or next month will feel if you don’t finish this project, and then visualize how they will look if you do. Procrastinating is making the wrong decision when you know perfectly well what the right decision is. Visualizing it will make it even clearer. 

• Hire an executive assistant

If there’s too much on your plate, you need help getting to the bottom of your to-do list.  The most sustainable way to make that work in time is to get the help you need: an executive assistant. Getting executive support will guarantee all your admin work is taken care of, and it will free up your calendar and give you time back to complete your top priorities while your executive assistant takes care of the rest. 

What happens if you don’t stop procrastinating

• You’ll feel increased stress and anxiety
• You’ll become unreliable and hurt work relationships
• The quality of your work will decrease since you’ll run out of time to finish it

There are many reasons executives procrastinate, and many approaches that can help you solve the situation. In our experience, the best way to stop procrastinating is to hire an executive assistant: they can take a big part of your workload so you’re not overwhelmed. They’ll act as your accountability partner and will be the ultimate solution to stop procrastinating.