PROCRASTINATION: Breaking the Habit

About 4 out of every 10 people avoid facing difficult task and deliberately look for distractions, and unfortunately there are 'distractors' everywhere.  When there is a significant period between when you intended do a job and the time you actually did it, you procrastinated.

Procrastination is putting tasks off to the last possible minute; you procrastinate when you shelve things you should be focusing on like right now for something else, usually something you are more comfortable doing. Procrastination is the science of delay.

Know that there is a difference between procrastination and prioritizing. Rescheduling something very important for genuine reasons for a day or two may not be procrastination as long as it is not reoccurring. When you feeling tired and you put off doing a task just so you can get some rest is not procrastination, again as long as it is not reoccurring. If you are just making up excuses because you don’t want to do something at that very moment, then you are procrastinating.

Procrastination can be a major problem in both your career and your personal life because procrastination is the thief of time. When you keep putting off things, they keep piling up and getting in your way of achieving other things. Then you have missed opportunities, frenzied work hours, feel stressed, guilt and resentment; you find you are being overwhelmed easily because there is just so much to do.

The habit of procrastination is putting off what you can do
today till tomorrow.

People who procrastinate overtime have it as a deeply ingrained habit.  They are always prone to shifting what they can do now to a later time even when there is nothing stopping them. Are there ways to put off and avoid procrastinating? Of course there are. Knowing that you are procrastinating is the first step. Making efforts to stop is the greatest thing you can do for yourself.

Procrastination like every other habit cannot be broken over night as it is most times ingrained; it can only be stopped when you have persistently stopped practising them. The best thing to do is use as many approaches as possible to maximize your chances of beating procrastination. What will work for one person will not necessary work for the next, and one technique might not necessarily work for the different task you have to handle. You might even need to do something different from what is in the books. The key thing to note is that it is necessary to break the habit of procrastination.

Do it quickly: There is no particular reason why people procrastinate, but when you find a particular task unpleasant you try and avoid doing it. The way to deal with such task is to just do it and be done with it.

Be Organized and Prioritize: You want to stop procrastination? Then you should practise being organised. Organised people manage to deal with the issue of procrastination by having prioritized list of their entire task, i.e. having a ‘to-do list’. This list emphasizes how important the task is, and identifies precisely when it’s should be due. You do not have to be a perfectionist, most perfectionist are procrastinator as they want everything available before they start. Just be organised in your process and start off right away.

Avoid the feeling of Been Overwhelmed: Since procrastination comes from feeling overwhelmed by a task, you can avoid feeling overwhelmed by breaking down task into manageable step. By breaking the task down and doing each step one after the other and not all at once, you will feel that you're achieving things, and the whole project won't be so overwhelming after all.

Be Convinced: Surprisingly even if you are organised you still might feel overwhelmed to do a task. Your doubts about your skills, the resources needed and time it will take to get a task accomplished might limit the chances of you starting at all. Well, the task will be there if you do not convince yourself to start. Make a decision to start.

Focus on One Task at a Time: There is no point dividing your attention between tasks. Some people are good at multitasking and can do so many different things in a short time. If you know you cannot multi-task, stay clear of trying to be or else you get back to be overwhelmed, putting off completion of a task and delaying a whole lot of other stuff.

Manage Your Time: It is interesting to know that some people’s procrastination habit comes from their inability to manage their own time. You have not gotten down to arranging your apartment in a week because you wake up late, and then you rush off to work and then you get back from the office and watch TV or eat out with friends. You back at home to sleep and wake up late the next day; the circle repeats itself. Take charge of yourself and your time. Spend less time on frivolities and more time on more important task.

Feeling Lazy? When you feel lazy, even simple tasks seem like too much work because your energy is too low compared to the energy required by the task. If you blame the task for being too difficult or tedious, you'll procrastinate to conserve energy. Raise your energy level by eating right and exercising regularly. It is no secret that a fit person can handle much more task than an unfit person even though the difficulty of the task remains same. Improve on your eating habit; make your diet abundant in raw fruits and vegetables.

Technically the best thing to tell anyone who procrastinates is ‘get off your butt and get to work!!’