How to stop procrastinating as a teacher

The reports are due on Friday. It is Wednesday evening, and somehow the kitchen is spotless, the inbox is tidy and the reports are still not started. If you have ever searched for how to stop procrastinating as a teacher, you are in good company. Most of us do this at some point, including the colleagues who look the most organised.

Here is the first thing worth saying. Procrastination is rarely about laziness. Teachers are some of the hardest working people I know. When we put a task off, it is usually because something about the task itself is making it hard to start. Find that something, and the task usually starts to move.

Why we put tasks off: look at the task, not your character

When a task keeps slipping, I find it helps to ask which of these is true.

It is unclear. "Sort out the scheme of work" is not a task. It is a cloud. We avoid clouds because there is no obvious first move.

It is too big. Thirty reports feel like a mountain. One report feels like twenty minutes.

It has to be perfect. If you believe the first draft must be the final draft, starting feels risky, so you wait until you feel ready. That feeling rarely arrives on its own.

It is uncomfortable. Some tasks carry an emotion with them: a difficult email to a parent, feedback for a colleague, a conversation you would rather not have. We are not avoiding the work. We are avoiding the feeling.

Each of these needs a different fix, which is why the general advice to "just get on with it" so rarely helps.

How to stop procrastinating as a teacher: five practical steps

Write down the very first action. Not "write reports" but "open the template and write the first comment for the first student on the list". A first step you can see is a first step you can take.

Shrink the time, not the standard. Tell yourself you will work on it for twenty-five minutes and then stop. Starting is usually the hardest part. Once you have started, carrying on is much easier.

Give yourself permission to write a rough version. A rough draft you can improve is worth far more than a perfect one that does not exist yet. Decide what "good enough" looks like before you begin.

Set an earlier deadline with someone else. Tell a colleague you will send them the draft by Tuesday. A deadline that another person knows about is much harder to quietly move.

Do the uncomfortable one early. For tasks that carry an emotion, the waiting is often worse than the doing. This is the idea behind eating the frog: do the hardest task first, before the day fills up.

When it is more than procrastination

Sometimes putting things off is a sign of something bigger. If you are avoiding almost everything, feel exhausted most of the time or dread going into work, that is not a time management problem, and you should not try to solve it alone. Talk to your line manager, a trusted colleague or your doctor, and use any staff support your school offers. Asking for help early is a sensible professional decision, not a weakness.

For school leaders, there is one more point. If your whole team is missing the same deadline, look at the deadline, not just the team. Is the task clear? Is the timing realistic? Is anyone checking in halfway?

Over more than twenty years in education, I have found that meeting deadlines is less about willpower and more about making the next step small and obvious.

So here is a question for this evening. What is the one task you have been avoiding, and what is the very first action you could take on it in the next ten minutes?

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