How I stopped procrastinating and learned to love my tax return (sort of)

Procrastination is self-harm.

At its root, procrastination is about sacrificing your future to avoid unpleasant or uncomfortable feelings in the present. We don’t want to do something, and so the familiar song of the procrastinator begins: I don’t feel like it, I’m not in the mood, I’ll do it better later.

By avoiding stress today, we’re creating problems for ourselves tomorrow. Do this often, and your friendships, your work prospects, your health and your life start to suffer. The worst thing about it is we know this, even while we’re procrastinating. That’s what makes it so painful.

I write in more detail here about why we procrastinate; this post aims to help you change some of the triggers so that you do it less often.

We rarely procrastinate on tasks that are meaningful to us, that we are good at and find enjoyable. Instead, we avoid tasks that are aversive to us in some way.

The six triggers for procrastination

We find a task aversive when we have these feelings about it:

• It’s boring
• Frustrating
• Difficult
• Unstructured or ambiguous
• It lacks personal meaning
• It lacks intrinsic rewards (ie not fun or engaging)

The more of these a task has for you, the more likely you are to procrastinate on it.

So how do you deal with them?

Reverse the triggers. Make a boring task more interesting, or a difficult task easier. Give it structure, meaning and rewards of your own. 

I have some suggestions below, but get creative with this. Only you know how you feel about a task, and what changes those feelings. So experiment, play, find what works for you.

Make an effort to notice your thoughts, the stories you’re telling yourself about what you need to do. Write them down, if needs be. Then see if you can reframe it, take a different view of the task at hand. Instead of feeling you have to do it, try to see that you get to do it.

Try not to ruminate on how hard/boring/awful it will be. You’re always wrong. 

We humans are endlessly adaptable animals. Whether the worst happens – or indeed the best – we quickly recalibrate our emotions to fit. So once we start doing a task, the emotions around it tend to be less intense, and rarely last as long as we expected them to.

Consider also how you have dealt with similar challenges in the past. This will help diminish the dread, and remind you that you’re more resilient than you think.

How I stopped procrastinating and learned to love my tax return

Year after year, I procrastinated on my annual accounts. Receipts got stuffed in a drawer to deal with later. Bills often got lost in piles of paperwork, and I’d end up paying interest on credit cards or late charges on bills.

It was stressful, and gave me a lot of anxiety. But I wasn’t good with money, I told myself. And why should I be? I’m a writer, not an accountant. 

Though I constantly promised I’d get on top of it all, I never did. At the end of each tax year, I’d vow to catch up. It would hang over me for months. Until January, when my tax return was due and I’d be in chaos, sorting through it all and trying to remember why I got a train to Liverpool two years ago or what what I’d bought from a website with a strange name.

Finally, I changed my money mindset.

Instead of telling myself I was bad with money, I saw organising my finances as a chance to learn about it. Rather than seeing money as grubby, uncreative, and tedious, I considered the freedom and choice it gave me. Especially when I actually knew how much was going in and out, every month.

We all have stories we tell ourselves about money. Some of them are rooted in childhood, and we’ve believed them for so long that we barely notice them. Or see how they’re affecting our behaviour. I’ve made a workbook to help you uncover your money stories, and change them. It’s free: just sign up for it here.

But here’s how I finally stopped procrastinating on my money admin. And how you can change your procrastination triggers, too.

Create structure

• If the task is ill-defined, get clarity. Ask questions. Get help. Make sure you know what you need to do, how to do it – and how you’ll know when it’s done.
• Make some rules. If you tend to get lost in unimportant tasks/busywork, block out some time on your calendar and choose not to open email, do chores or whatever else distracts you until you’ve done some substantial work on your most important task. 
• Make a detailed, step-by-step plan, including the very next baby steps you need to take: a phone call, some research, opening a file on your computer.
• Breaking large tasks into sub-tasks reduces stress (and therefore procrastination). Make the next steps clear and manageable. Success with the early steps gives you the confidence to tackle the harder parts. 
• Do the first step immediately, if you can. Get some momentum. If not, schedule time in to do it soon.

With my money admin, I decided to block out two hours on my calendar every two weeks to deal with paying bills, sorting insurances, chasing invoices, checking investments as well as updating my accounts.

Gradually, I developed a checklist of regular tasks I need to do in these sessions, ticking them off one by one. 

Make it less frustrating

• Make sure you have all you need to begin. Do you need help, instructions or advice? Resources? Tools?
• But don’t get stuck in the preparation phase. Eat the frog. Get started.
• Use a timer, and work in short sprints.
• If possible, set a limit on the total time you’ll work on it each day. We’re often more willing to start an aversive task if also know when it will end.
• Use habit stacking. Find something you like doing, and tether it to your task. I love my morning coffee, for instance. So when I wanted to start a habit of writing for an hour before breakfast, I sipped my first cup at my desk, and my second (and sadly final) coffee of the day after the hour was up.

At first, my money admin sessions were hugely frustrating. I couldn’t find passwords, or find the data I needed on sites like PayPal and Stripe. 

But slowly, I developed systems: a secure password manager, maps of where to click to get to the figures I needed, spreadsheets, and a checklist that put each task in a logical order. 

Doing it regularly also made it less frustrating. I can remember what receipts are for, because they are recent. I no longer find that I’ve been paying a membership or subscription I thought I’d cancelled for months after I needed it. I feel more in control.

Lacking intrinsic rewards?

If you’re doing a job only because your boss told you to, because a client demanded it or because you need the money, there’s very little internal motivation. You resent it before you even begin, and procrastination often follows. So build in your own rewards.

• Create milestones, so you can see your progress. Celebrate reaching each one.
• Plan rewards. (Try to avoid using procrastination activities like scrolling for this. It’s easy to plan a 15-minute social media break and end up losing hours!) Do something life-enhancing: go for a walk, talk to a friend, play some music you love.
• Work on your mindset. Find ways to align the task with your values and goals.

When I first started tackling my money admin regularly, I would schedule lunch or a drink with a friend immediately afterwards. This meant I had something to look forward to – and another incentive not to procrastinate. 

Once these admin blocks became an established part of my routine, I no longer needed this. The peace of mind it gave me became a reward in itself.

I now deliver my numbers to my accountant in April, just after the tax year ends. I know exactly what I’ll owe in tax the following January. I can predict my cashflow and invest in my business – and in travel and fun – more confidently. And I enjoy a much calmer start to the year, with no last-minute scramble to do my tax return.

Make it easier

• Start by listing what you need to know. Do the research, gather materials. Find a how-to video, course or tutorial. Get a friend who already knows how to do it to show you.
• Set yourself up for success. Change your environment to reduce temptation/distractions. Put as much friction as possible between you and your usual procrastination activities. Put your phone in another room, for instance. And turn off your email and notifications. 
• Take regular breaks, but avoid retreating into numbing activities, or things you know distract you. 
• Decide in advance what to do about social distractions. Will you answer texts or calls? What will you say if someone interrupts you?
• Once you have all you need, schedule the task for the time of the day/week when you know you’re at your most focussed, and have time to do it without feeling rushed or pressured. 

When I started doing my money admin, I’d turn off email and other distractions, and play ambient music to help me focus. I’d do it in the morning, when I find it easiest to concentrate, and turn off my phone.

Now that I’ve developed systems, my finances no longer seem overwhelming, and interruptions don’t derail me. It no longer feels difficult. Sometimes it even feels fun!

Make it more interesting

• Play music while you work. Or a podcast, if the task you’ve been putting off doesn’t need your full focus. 
• Work in a favourite café, a co-working space, or some other environment you enjoy.
• Find a way to gamify it. I like breaking down a tedious task into micro-steps that I tick off as I go.
• Focus on the process or the journey as well as the end goal: how you get from start to finish, as well as what you want to achieve.

With my money admin, I started a list of what I needed to do in each of my two monthly sessions: bills to pay, statements to download. Each time I did it, I tried to make this list more efficient, and do it faster. Doing it with a timer on made it feel more of a game.

I now have a recurring list of tasks that unfold in a logical order, with all the information I need to do it quickly. I can now do everything in under an hour. It now feels interesting to see what money has come in, watching savings and investments grow.

Find your own meaning

• Get clear on your big why: what you’re trying to do it the world, the difference your project might make once it’s done.
• If this is a major project like a book or a film, the finish line may well seem so distant it’s daunting. So focus instead on process, on doing each part of the job gracefully, efficiently – or in a way that aligns with your values.
• Consider what you might learn from it, the opportunities it offers for improvement, practice, developing new skills, contacts, confidence. Even if you don’t do it perfectly, there’s a lot to be gained.

Freedom and autonomy are huge values for me. I used to do my annual accounts grudgingly, resentfully. I felt I was being forced to do it. By the tax office, the Government – even my accountant. When I saw that being on top of my finances gave me more freedom, more control, my bi-weekly money admin became much more meaningful.

And if you still procrastinate?

If you lapse into procrastination again, be kind to yourself. Allow yourself to feel whatever you’re feeling – anger, disappointment, guilt, shame. Without wallowing in it and beating yourself up.

Remember that everyone procrastinates sometimes. If it’s become an ingrained habit for you, it takes time and patience to break a habit and put new behaviour in place.

So take full responsibility for your procrastination, no excuses. Then simply move on, and make it right.

Instead of judging yourself, get curious. What was the trigger this time? How could you redesign the task to get around that?

Then make a plan. And begin.