Stop procrastinating on one task. Write the if-then plan tested in 94 studies

Piers Steel, a psychologist at the University of Calgary, reviewed 216 earlier works on procrastination, from journal articles to theses, for a 2007 paper in Psychological Bulletin. Citing earlier surveys, he put the share of adults who procrastinate chronically at some 15 to 20 percent. Most other people do it now and then, usually with a task they fully mean to do. What’s missing is rarely the wish. It’s a plan for the exact moment you’ll start.

Psychologists call that plan an implementation intention, and it has a simple shape: “If it is X, then I will do Y.” Start with a two-minute job. Write one if-then sentence for the task you’ve been avoiding, and put it where you’ll see the moment it names.

What the Christmas studies found

The best-known early test came from psychologists Peter Gollwitzer and Veronika Brandstätter, published in 1997 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Before the winter break, they asked students to write a report on how they spent Christmas Eve, no later than 2 days after it, and mail it in. Half the students also wrote down when and where they would do it.

With that plan, 71 percent wrote the report in time. Without it, 32 percent did.

The planners also wrote sooner. The dates on their reports averaged 2.3 days after Christmas Eve, against 7.7 days for the rest.

In a companion study, students listed hard projects they meant to finish over the break, such as a term paper or finding a new apartment. When they had decided when and where to start, they finished 62 percent of those projects, against 22 percent when they hadn’t. That study measured plans the students made on their own, so other differences between the students could explain part of the gap.

Look at how you’d describe the task you’re avoiding right now. If the description has no time or place in it, you haven’t made a plan yet.

Why 94 studies matter more

A study of 36 students can’t settle much by itself. In 2006, Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran pooled 94 tests of if-then plans from 63 research reports, covering health habits, schoolwork, how people treat each other and other goals. Across all of them, the plans improved how often people reached their goals with an average effect size of 0.65, which researchers call medium to large.

Effect sizes are hard to picture, so here’s the standard conversion. The typical person who only set a goal sits in the middle of the goal-only group, ahead of half of it. The typical person who also wrote a plan did better than about 74 percent of that same group, roughly 3 in 4.

The review found the plans helped at more than one point. They got people started, kept them on task when something pulled them away, and helped them drop a course of action that wasn’t working. Gollwitzer’s explanation is that the plan makes the decision ahead of time, so when the moment arrives you notice it quickly and start with less debate, much as you would with a habit.

1. Pick one task you keep avoiding

Choose the task you’ve moved from one to-do list to the next for weeks. Just one. Ten plans written in one sitting turn into a second to-do list, and you’ll learn more from one plan you actually test.

Pick something with a clear finish line and name it in a few words, like “update my resume”, “book a dental cleaning” or “mail the passport renewal”. “Get organized” won’t work, since there’s no moment when it’s finished.

2. Shrink it to a 10-minute start

A whole task is too heavy to start on a tired Tuesday evening. Cut it down to its first physical action, something you can finish in under 10 minutes. “Update my resume” becomes “open the file and fix the dates on my last job.” “Do my taxes” becomes “put every tax form that’s arrived into one folder.”

If you can’t picture your hands doing it, make it smaller, and start the action with a verb.

3. Choose a cue you can’t miss

The “if” half is your cue. It can be a time, such as 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, a place, such as the moment you sit down at your desk, or something you already do every day, such as starting the coffee maker. Pick a cue that happens whether or not you feel like working.

Give your cue an hour as well as a day. In a 2011 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a large Midwestern utility mailed 3,272 employees reminders about free workplace flu shots. Workers whose mailer asked for a date and a time got vaccinated at 37.1 percent, against 33.1 percent with the plain reminder. A date alone helped less, and the researchers couldn’t rule out chance for it.

A cue tied to a day also tends to fire on that day. In the 1997 Christmas study, 10 of the 12 planners who wrote their reports over the holidays did it on the exact day they had picked.

Then put your plan where the cue happens, on the door you leave through, your laptop lid or the bathroom mirror.

4. Write the if-then sentence

Join the two halves in this order: “If [cue], then I will [action].” For the resume, that could read, “If I sit down on the 5:40 train home on Tuesday, then I will open my resume and fix the dates on my last job.”

The sentence works even when someone else prompts it. Before the 2008 Pennsylvania Democratic presidential primary, political scientist David Nickerson and behavioral scientist Todd Rogers had callers ask voters when they’d vote, where they’d be coming from and what they’d be doing beforehand. Among the people reached, those questions raised turnout by 4.1 percentage points, checked against the state’s official voter file.

In homes with only one eligible voter, the rise was 9.1 points. The researchers think people who live with other voters often make those plans together anyway. If nobody in your week asks when you’ll get to your task, your written sentence has to ask for them.

Here are five vague intentions rewritten the same way:

Example plans. Swap in times and places from your own week.

Your sentence is ready when a stranger could read it and know where you’d be and what you’d be doing.

5. Plan for getting stuck

Most plans hit the same snag sooner or later. The cue shows up, and you still don’t start. Write a second if-then for that moment, aimed at whatever usually stops you, like “If I open the file and freeze, then I’ll write one bullet for my current job, even a bad one.” Another option is “If a friend texts while I’m working, then I’ll answer after I save the file.”

Gollwitzer and Sheeran’s review found that if-then plans also helped people stay on task once something tempted them away, which is the job this backup line does.

Keep it to one backup, and write it on the same note as the plan.

6. Check it after 3 days

Three days gives most weekday cues at least one chance to come around. Look at what happened and change one thing at most.

• The cue came and you acted. Keep the plan, and write the next 10-minute action as a new “then”.
• The cue never came. Maybe the train was canceled or you worked from home. Swap in a cue that shows up more reliably.
• The cue came and you didn’t act. Shrink the action until it feels almost too small to bother with.

Write your first if-then

Fill in this line now, while the task is on your mind: “If it’s ___ (a time, a place or something you already do), then I will ___ (one action under 10 minutes).” Filled in, it might read, “If it’s 8 p.m. on Wednesday and the dishes are done, then I will open the passport form and fill in page one.”