How I Defeated Procrastination as a Software Engineer
My Personal War with Procrastination
Lets face reality.
I procrastinate, you procrasinate, we all procrastinate.
Nobody is immune to procrastination. Whether you like it or not.
And for some people it can get really bad, myself included 🙋♂️.
Now before we begin, here is some context to help you understand me better.
My name is Daniel Craciun, and I am a 19 years old Software Engineer and university student studying Computer Science.
I have been learning Software Engineering for about 2 years, and I have learned so much along the way.
Despite that, I always reflect on how much more I could of learned if procrastination didn't exist.
Perhaps I would already have a job as a SWE.
Perhaps I would have more completed side-projects under my belt.
Perhaps I would have developed more meaningful connections with people in this industry.
Well, from my experience regret is never the answer, so I don't think too much about these hypothetical scenarios.
Instead, I find it more useful to actively search for ways to reduce procrastination, even if the improvements are minor.
Here is an anecdote about my personal war with procrastination when starting a new SaaS (Software as a Service) project:
I am sitting down, staring at a blank code editor, waiting for inspiration to kick in.
I have a rough idea of what I want to create; actually I feel like the idea is amazing, but clearly my thinking doesn't translate into code.
After an hour of thinking about my project, I begin to feel overwhelmed and ask myself: "Is this project even possible? I need to produce a MVP in one month, am I good enough to do this in just one month?"
And then the wave of doubt comes crashing in.
I shut down my laptop, and then I procrastinate on my phone for the rest of the day.
And the cycle repeats...
The good news is, I have broken the cycle (at least for now), and I want to share with you what I did, and hopefully this fix works for you.
The Natural Planning Model
Inspired by the book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity by David Allen.
NOTE: This is an affiliate link, I will earn a commision for every purchase via this link.
This book promotes a method for project planning known as the Natural Planning Model.
It is named this way because it's the natural process our brains use to think about challenges.
However, most people today don't follow this way of thinking, which leads to procrastination.
The Natural Planning Model consists of these five steps:
- Define the purpose of your project. Why are you doing it?
- Define and visualize the outcome of your project. What does your end product look like?
- Brainstorm: Fill in the gaps between where you are now and the end result. How will you move from where you are now to the desired outcome?
- Organize: Any information you brainstorm should be organized to make it easier to reference for you (and your team if you have one).
- Identify Next Actions: This means create tasks, prioritize tasks, set deadlines, then choose the very next action to work on.
EXERCISE💡 Think about a project you are currently working on, whether it's big or small, and try to think about it through the lens of these five principles.
Final Thoughts
So this was my personal experience with procrastination as a developer.
Following the five principles above single-handedly eliminated my procrastination to get started on my SaaS project.
I now feel like a successful developer by reducing my estimated planning time from 7 days to just 2 hours!
Many thanks to David Allen for illustrating this way of thinking to me. Procrastination for software projects is no longer something to be afraid of.
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