How to stop procrastinating and start leading

Over the past twenty years, I have been fortunate to work with dozens of business and political leaders.

The best leaders are those who can make quick professional decisions based on the information they have.

But this doesn’t mean they are immune to procrastination. They just use tools to manage it.

When we walk into an ice cream shop, most of us have trouble choosing a flavor.

We have eaten ice cream hundreds of times and know all the flavors. But we still stand at the counter examining the pistachio, chocolate, cookies and cream, and salted caramel hoping that divine inspiration will come to us.

And that is a simple decision.

When you’re faced with difficult decisions, such as where to invest or enter a new market, it can be paralyzing.

Kicking difficult decisions into the long grass is the easy option. But it is rarely the right one.

From a young age we are told not to rush into decisions, but our gut feeling is usually right.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book Blink: the power of thinking without thinkingg he makes a strong argument for going with your feelings.

He showed that geologists from the Getty Museum in California spent fourteen months investigating whether a statue was fake. Within seconds, three different art historians could tell that this was so. Their years of researching masterpieces had given them an advantage that experts could not match.

As a leader in your own field, you have years of experience. Don’t underestimate how valuable that is.

While you may want to gather all the information to make the right decision. On a subconscious level, your mind has gone through thousands of data points and past experiences in two seconds.

More than 90% of the time you will be right in your decision the first time. The wrong decisions are waste. Don’t waste time regretting it.

Even if you’re really concerned about a decision, waiting until you have all the evidence you can will fractionally reduce your poor decision-making. Even if you really care about a decision, you can only fractionally reduce your bad decisions.

The extra time it took has closed other doors for you.

Will we enter these awards for this great work we have done? Oh dear, the deadline to enter has passed. Decision made: no.

Shall we enter this new market? Oh dear, now our competitor is dominating that sector so we can’t gain a foothold. Made a decision. It’s a no.

Shall we invest in training for this valuable employee? Oh dear, they’ve been poached by a rival. So that’s also a no.

In your eyes, procrastination is postponing a decision. But as a leader, it’s often not just about postponing a decision. It gives time for the decision to be made for you and that answer is almost always no.

So here are seven ways to stop procrastinating and get back the most important tool you have as a leader: decision-making:

Divide your week: Assign yourself days of the week for the tasks you need to do.

(My week is split into Monday and Tuesday clients and new business, content creation on Wednesday, management on Thursday, finance on Friday)

Wedge difficult jobs: If you have a job that you really don’t want to do but that you keep putting off, schedule it BEFORE you want to do something and then force yourself to do it.

Deadline decisions: If you need to gather more information to make a decision, set a clear time frame for when you will get that information.

Don’t go back on decisions: Unless circumstances change, move on.

Delegate decision making. You have a team; use them.

Minimize distractions. Turn off all notifications on your phone and laptop. Tell your staff that you only look at emails at certain times of the day and do so.

Two minute rule: Anything you can do in two minutes, you should do immediately.

Note: To write this article I used techniques 1,2 and 6.