Procrastination, Self-sabotage

A Great "Hack" that Works!

It wasn’t so long ago that I discovered Substack. There’s such a wealth of knowledge, conveyed by so many interesting people on this platform! It has become my “social media go-to” since finding it, and it even led me to very belatedly join X in January 2025 where I see regular updates from many of those same interesting people.

After two, or maybe three months’ experience of Substack, I began thinking that maybe I could start a Substack too?

Emergence of Procrastination > Sabotage

There followed a period of several weeks spent procrastinating, doing my UNCONSCIOUS best to sabotage the idea altogether. Self-sabotage is not a deliberate or conscious act that we are aware of at the time. Reading excellent Substacks by others was certainly one thing that reinforced my self-sabotage – pondering how good they were, how well they were written and how I couldn’t possibly “come up to the mark”, all contributed to a wariness of trying to start my own Substack.

Of course, I had self-sabotaged before! Recently too!

Something else I managed to self-sabotage was the planning and preparation of CBT4T 2025 – a fifth “life” of the CBT for Tinnitus E-Programme, and something that was particularly important to me.

Although the previous versions had proven successful for those using them, I was aware there were still improvements that I could make. But each time I sat at my desk to work on those improvements, I confused myself – most frequently because of “over-thinking” what I wanted to do. It would have been around mid-October 2024 when I first decided it was time to make some changes….

I completed and published CBT4T 2025 around a week before Christmas!

And, of course, I used Christmas and the New Year period procrastinating, leading to further delay starting the Substack…

Realisation

It was mid-January, following an appointment with one of my patients enrolled on the CBT4T programme, that the “procrastination-penny” dropped! We had been discussing issues she was experiencing that, as an outside observer, I could clearly see was self-sabotage behaviour.

Just to reiterate and be very clear here, self-sabotage is not a conscious, purposeful act. It’s something called “a defence mechanism” that is created subconsciously.

It isn’t as though self-sabotage is a rare thing; on the contrary, it’s really common, and a discussion I frequently have with patients.

The “Hack”

You know how sometimes we hear or see something “at just the right time”?

Just a couple of days following the discussion with the lady about her self-sabotage, I was participating in an online conversation with a group of people (from one of the Substack groups I belong to in fact!), and of all things, the topic of procrastination came up. One of them started talking about what he referred to as a hack he used when he found himself putting off doing something he knew he had to do – even wanted to do (or sometimes didn’t want to do!).

The hack is…. tell yourself you can “Do it badly”.

I could see the benefit of using this straightaway! It was just the gift I needed at that particular time, and I have indeed made a start on my new Substack!

It has taken a while (and many hours) to fathom all the settings needed to create this Substack; however, it was “the hack” that helped me to start!

Giving myself permission to “do it badly” was enough to help me make a start, and here I am, paying “the hack” forward!

Giving myself permission to “get things wrong” cancelled out any need for a defence mechanism. I could delete what I’d written if it was so bad, I could change what I’d written if I didn’t like it after I’d written it. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, and once I was happy with the article, I could publish it on Substack. In fact, I learned after publishing my first post earlier today - only to discover I had made an error with one of the images that looked an absolute eyesore (I’d used the wrong size) – I was able to un-publish the post, make the necessary correction, and republish.

All is good with the world! Disaster avoided!

I have used “the hack” several times over since learning about it. Such a simple “permission to do it badly” helps you to start something. So many of us have an over-developed perfectionist streak. Perfectionism is frequently behind procrastination, and thus behind both not starting and not finishing something!

Next time you find yourself putting off doing something that you know needs to be done, give yourself permission to “do it badly”.

You won’t do it badly at all – but you will make that much needed start (or finish!)

I see others do the same time and again. For example….

Self-sabotage frequently manifests as procrastination as I have described above for me!

I also see it frequently before someone enrols on the CBT4T programme.

It’s not unusual for someone to contact me about help – usually by email or through sending in their Tinnitus Functional Index (TFI) – and I then hear nothing more from them for several weeks and even months in some cases.

In some of these cases, they have spent the intervening weeks/months putting off enrolling. In other cases, I have seen people enrol on the course, not start it, and then weeks or months later, email to ask if they can still start the course (which of course, they can).

There can be many reasons for this; however, here are the TWO most common ones:

Thinking thoughts such as:

• What if I can’t do it?

• What if I’m the exception to everybody else and it doesn’t help?

I recognise “what if’s” in myself all too well. Being a psychotherapist doesn’t prevent me from procrastinating!

So, the next time you find yourself “putting off doing something you want to do” – use “the hack”!

And if you do use “the hack”?

Do leave a comment to let us know how you got on!