“Procrastination is my sin.
It brings me naught but sorrow.
I know that I should stop it.
In fact, I will — tomorrow!”
—Gloria Pitzer
Having spent nearly 30 years in the industry, Kay Burnham knows how stressful ticketing can be. And it certainly does not help when our “inner critic” pops up with negative self-talk. By way of illustration, Burnham says, “Oh, you didn't handle the customer correctly. You made a mistake in the system that caused a financial [issue]. All of these things can start to play on repeat. Oh, my gosh, that last customer, if I hadn't said that one thing. Oh, my gosh, how am I going to not say that? And you start to criticize yourself for how you handled a situation in the past, how you dealt with a customer, how you handled a request from your boss, and you get in your head about it.”
She continues, “Instead of giving yourself grace and leaning into the fact that you are human, and this is just part of being human and it is OK, you cause stress for yourself … That next customer comes up and they say that one word and now you're in it. You are triggered and [tell yourself], ‘Oh please, OK, just don't say that thing again. Just don't say that to this person. OK? Are they looking at me wrong? Are they going to [do or say something]?’ You get in your head about it and you start criticizing yourself, so your inner critic can cause a lot of stress [and lead to procrastination.]”
Kay Burnham
Almost three years ago, when Burnham was still holding down a senior position with the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California, she decided to branch out and help others address their workplace health. She founded Perceiving Possibilities and then, at the beginning of 2022, she set out to provide coaching and leadership training full time. By then, Burnham already knew how procrastination contributes to workplace stress and she wanted to get the message out, especially to those in ticketing and live events.
“Ticketing is very deadline driven,” Burnham says. “It is very in the now. It is a perishable product, as I like to say. It's like milk. It has an expiration date. And when it's done, it is done. There is nothing else you can do about it. So, understanding where those deadlines are and what they mean for the work you are engaged in can help you really understand where your procrastination lies, and then not beating yourself up for it [is vital].
She continues, “[Understanding can help you stop] that spiral of, ‘Oh, I always do this. I always leave things to the last minute.’ It's not true. It's not true for anyone. Because it only takes one time that you didn't leave something to the last minute for ‘always’ not to be true. Therefore, always is not true.”
The first key to understanding, says Burnham, is knowing what exactly procrastination is and what it isn’t. Benjamin Franklin said, “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” But we all ignore that advice from time to time. Burnham says that does not necessarily mean we are procrastinators.
“I think people think they procrastinate when they don't because at least in the United States, we are in a toxic productivity environment,” she says. “There is a belief that if we delay doing something, we are procrastinating, but procrastination is more of an emotional state. It is about the resistance to getting something done and pushing it off as long as you can to avoid the challenging task, either emotionally or physically, to avoid the hardness or challenge of something. It does not mean you are procrastinating if you are simply delaying doing something. You may actually be engaged in effective time management and prioritization of tasks. So, it is about changing the story.”
As with any narrative, it is crucial to unravel the plot, in this instance, to ascertain whether an individual is genuinely efficient in managing their time or is procrastinating when postponing a task. Better time management alone will not end procrastination, says Burnham. “It takes self-reflection, turning inside and really connecting to what emotions are going on for you when you delay a task,” she says.
And it is not always easy. Burnham says it can be very uncomfortable, but that is how you start to understand if it is procrastination or just reprioritizing your time. You may decide that a particular task is not that important. Or you may misjudge how long it will take to complete something, so you delay it, then realize it will take longer than you thought. “You didn't procrastinate [in that case],” Burnham says. “You underestimated your ability to get something done. That's OK. You learned a lesson from it. So, figuring out why you are delaying something is the key to understanding if you are procrastinating or not.”
To help support our peers and direct reports, Burnham says we must first support and understand ourselves from this perspective.
“You cannot support someone else through a process or an understanding if you haven’t truly gained it within yourself,” she says. “You are limited in your ability to be successful in that, so the first lens is to turn on yourself, to understand your way of being and what comes up for you. What comes up for you may not be the same thing for others, but it gives you a good starting point to build empathy around why someone might be challenged with this. And when we can approach a conversation or support someone out of a place of empathy and compassion, we are more likely to connect with their why and help them understand it. Once you understand that, then you can craft the path forward.”
But for some, crafting the path forward may be easier said than done.
“One of the great lessons I have learned by moving into being an entrepreneur is how much of what I thought was important to get done wasn't [important] and wasn't immediate, could be delayed, [and] could be accumulated into a pile of tasks,” Burnham says. “It is about changing how you view the tasks you have, the work that needs to be done and what truly is important, and being OK with letting go either to someone else or just in general letting go of the tasks that really are not important.”
Helpful Motivational Tools
With that in mind, Burnham says there are several tools people can use for motivation.
“The best one is self-compassion. Learning to practice self-compassion and telling yourself it is OK to feel this difficult, unpleasant feeling and to be with it and move through it [is important],” she says.
Burnham says, “Another one is looking to the other side of the task. Connecting with how you are going to feel when it is done and using that to drive you through and toward the fear of getting it done or the difficult nature of it. So, connecting to the reward at the end.”
Burnham also recommends that people tune in to their natural gifts and strengths. “We all have talents that are naturally ours that just come easy to us, and because of that, we can sometimes think of them as not important or just, well, everyone does this, so what's the big deal? But when you can learn and understand your strengths, you can see how you can apply them to the tasks that you may not enjoy as much or find difficult,” she says. “In doing that, you give yourself the motivation and the energy to accomplish the task because you make it easier for yourself.”
Sometimes, Burnham says, we are our own worst enemy, especially when we allow our inner critic to steer us off course.
“Your thoughts are your reality.” —Kay Burnham
“The inner critic is a nice, easy-packaging way to talk about it, but essentially it is just our negative self-talk,” she says. “It is the thoughts and the emotions that they engender that keep us in procrastination. It is our negativity bias, telling us all the ways that we might be hurt again. It is a portion of us that tries to keep us safe. We can learn to engage with [our inner critic] differently. The problems come when we just buy into everything it tells us. So, learning to change the way you talk to yourself about the thing you are procrastinating about is what gets you unstuck. Your thoughts are your reality.”
Burnham notes that recognizing where this tendency comes from can be useful.
“We do not receive a lot of messages growing up or even in adulthood that it's OK to be kind to yourself and that being kind to yourself is the best way to improve and not repeat mistakes. From an early age at school, the teachers don't come up to you and say, ‘You got 80% of this correct! Good on you! That's fantastic! That's awesome! Let's see how we can keep going and get the rest of it.’ No, they come up and say, ‘You didn't get 100%. You have to work on the rest of the stuff that you don't know. That's how you get there.’ So, we don't learn to applaud what we've achieved. We learn to only focus on what we haven't done,” Burnham says.
She continues, “It takes giving yourself permission and understanding that by being kind to yourself and celebrating what you are achieving, that's the way to give yourself the momentum to get the rest of it, to keep going, to continue down a path that is a little bit more difficult, because now you see everything you just accomplished. Wow, if I got 80% of that, I know that means I only have 20% left to do. That's phenomenal! That's much easier than the first 80%, right? But that's not how we're taught.”
Teaching ourselves not to procrastinate starts with that self-awareness but must be followed by conscious, consistent practice. It can also, at times, require outside support.
“It is like any skill you want to learn. You practice becoming aware of when you are in that negative self-talk. You learn how to provide yourself with the evidence that negative self-talk is just talk because there is this other pile of evidence that you're ignoring while you’re listening to [negative self-talk] that says otherwise. The more consistently you do this and then add in that self-compassion that it's OK [to] feel this way, it's OK that it's hard for me, it's OK that this challenges me, it's OK that I want to avoid it, these are all valid ways to be, now what do I need to move through this? Giv[ing] yourself what you need … helps move you through procrastination.”
“We all have an inner guardian.” —Kay Burnham
Just as we all have an inner critic, Burnham says we also have an inner guardian who can help us immensely to change our ways.
“The negative message we receive starting when we are young, about how we improve and learn, puts [our inner guardian] to sleep,” Burnham says. “But it never goes away.”
She continues, “That inner guardian is there to be the positive motivation, that cheerleader, that person who is there to protect you, and that's part of you. None of these things are separate from you. They are you. You want to protect yourself but have learned that negativity protects you. The inner guardian is the flip side of that. It is that positive side, the encouraging side, the one that we use with our friends and family when they are in a challenging situation, when we give a pep talk to someone else, when we talk them through their challenge, and when we hold space for them. That is your inner guardian coming out for someone else. You need to learn to direct that to yourself.”
The Rule of Three … or Four
Burnham says people tend to fall into dichotomous thinking — that something is either this or it’s that, that it is black or white — and such thinking can get us really stuck.
“In this case, the rule of three is the three questions [we need to ask ourselves],” she says. “Actually, it is four questions because you want to first find out whether you are procrastinating or not. The other three questions you need to ask yourself to move out of this are the why, the how and the what do I need?”
Burnham concedes that moving from inner critic to inner guardian is hard work, but it can be easier with support.
“It is uncomfortable, and that can make it feel hard, which is why support is important. Having that outside validation that … you are doing it right, you are OK, you are on the right track, you are going to slip up, you are going to go back into negative self-talk, that is just the way our brains are designed,” she says.
Burnham says there are lots of ways to approach making this shift. You can DIY it by using Google to identify online resources, find and join Facebook groups, then cobble things together to find a community where you can safely express yourself and receive feedback. You can also go to therapy or approach another person to help.
“If you are really deep into some hard emotions and things are coming up from your past, therapy is probably the way you want to go because you may have past traumas or experiences that keep bubbling up for you,” Burnham says. “The essence of coaching is having an accountability partner and somebody to support you, so they hold you accountable, and they hold space for you and your growth and your learning in a supportive way, so you feel safe. This can come from a coach, pastor, minister, or trusted friend or colleague, but having someone who will hold that space and hold you accountable for doing the work to get there.”
In her role as a well-being and leadership coach, Burnham offers professional one-on-one support to those who need it.
“[It is] just you and I, usually on Zoom, talking through this and helping you with exercises and ways to reframe [your] thoughts,” she says. “It goes beyond the negative self-talk and just into the stories we tell ourselves because even our positive stories can keep us stuck in a way of being.”
One important teaching is helping people identify what triggers the emotions that might take them off course.
“This comes from self-reflection and working on your personal self-awareness when you are outside of those moments,” she says. “When we are triggered, we know it because we have an intense emotional response that may be disproportionate to what is actually going on. There is something more there. It feels personal to us.”
When we encounter that situation, it is essential to come back and evaluate things when you feel good, says Burnham. The key is to not criticize yourself for it but look for what it was that triggered you and reflect on the cause. “[Ask if] that was real for you,” she says. “When we have a negative reaction to something, it generally means that we have an expectation or a need that is not being met. When we have a positive or pleasant emotion, we are getting our needs met in that moment. So, understanding what need wasn't being met can help you figure out how to lessen that trigger and move through it when it happens again.”
In the end, activating your inner guardian can improve day-to-day life for ticketing professionals, both at work and outside their busy careers.
“It is giving yourself grace. It’s giving other people grace. It lets you know that you are OK and that it is OK to make mistakes. And no matter how hard it feels in the moment, how guilty you feel or whatever unpleasant emotion is coming up, you are OK, and you will get through it because you've gotten through it every time you felt that before.”
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