Have you reached a point in your life where you feel that in order to be more successful in both your personal and professional life you need to eliminate procrastination? This is a great decision but first you need have a better understanding of what procrastination is and how it affects your life before you can start taking steps to eliminate it. While most people procrastinate at some time in their lives about certain things, there are some of us who procrastinate about everything that we have to do and this can become frustrating and difficult to manage.
So just what is procrastination? Fundamentally, procrastination is the conscious and unconscious act of putting off important tasks until a later date.Perhaps you find that most of the time non essential jobs are done instead of the more significant ones. To simplify things even further, procrastination is really just the dodging of doing a task that needs to be finished and accomplished in a timely manner. When you procrastinate, you postpone until tomorrow those things that need to be done today. Although this definition for procrastination seems quite straightforward, the effects of procrastination are not. Procrastination can be one of the most significant challenges you will have to conquer if you want to be happier and more successful in your life.
Procrastination not only affects your work, but also generally includes feelings such as guilt, insufficiency, self-disgust, anxiety, and depression. When you start to think about today's culture, there is less and less time in your day to do all the things that you need to get done so it is very imperative that you manage your time efficiently and eliminate procrastination as much as you can.
Most of us seem to have an emotional response when we have to accomplish a task and do something that we don't want to do, don't like doing, or are certain we just can't do. Learning how to recognize this response will not only make you aware that you might be procrastinating, but will also help you learn how to stop procrastinating.
You don't have to search too far to find information about how procrastination can have unfavorable effects on your all areas of your life. If there is so much information that supports this, then why are we still procrastinating? There are many explanations for why we procrastinate. For instance, many times we put things off and just don't do them because we don't get pleasure from doing these things. Perhaps we think if we can't perform the task perfectly then we might as well not do it at all.
Or perhaps there is a certainty in you that you just don't have the capability to complete those tasks that you have to do. Whatever your rationale for procrastinating, it's imperative that you recognize why you time and again accomplish tasks and meet deadlines at the last minute or just don't complete them at all. When you can determine why you procrastinate, you will be much more able to find solutions to the procrastination that is causing problems in your life. If you don't manage your problem of procrastination it can have a drastic affect on your life, and not in a good way.
When you ignore your procrastination, you do a lot of damage to yourself, particularly once you learn that there are so many ways you can triumph over procrastination. Procrastination is a routine, and like any other pattern it can be broken. If you don't overcome your tendency to procrastinate, it can have severe consequences on your personal and professional life and the lives of those you live and work with. In addition, if it goes on for too long, procrastination can affect your physical and mental health.
Why We Procrastinate
Many times we try to camouflage our avoidance by becoming very busy doing things that might be exciting, and even constructive. But many times these things don't move us towards the main objective, which might be something we hate doing, such as starting work on an essay long before the deadline is in sight. We know that we're going to have to accomplish certain tasks in the long run, so why do we bother to procrastinate in the first place?
One of the main reasons for procrastination is improper time management. How often have you convinced yourself that you have plenty of time to get something accomplished, only to realize that you now have a short time to meet a deadline? Having a distorted sense of just how much time you have to do something can be the start of procrastination. Or perhaps you lack the skills to properly prioritize the things you have to accomplish. It's easy to do something insignificant at the bottom of your to-do list if it's more fun than something more important near the top of the list.
Another reason for procrastination is if you take on too many tasks at one time. When this happens you might find yourself feeling overwhelmed with the number of things that you have to accomplish, which can in turn lead to you not even knowing where to start. If this is the case then you might start to feel very anxious about the things you need to get done and spend more time worrying about where and how to start than you actually spending "doing".
If you find that you have problems concentrating on what you need to do, then you might find yourself putting off getting things done. As well, if you're uncertain exactly what you need to do, you can procrastinate so that you avoid this uncertainty. This is a good time for you take a little step back and take a close look at what you need to accomplish and how you need to accomplish it. The more overwhelmed you feel about the things you have to get done, the more anxiety you're going to feel, and the less you're going to get accomplished at all.
Many people procrastinate because they are afraid of failure or because they feel that they just can't meet the standards they've set out for themselves. Are you afraid of success and the consequences of not being successful? We all need to come to a point in our lives where we realize that perfectionism is an unrealistic standard that we just can't meet, no matter how much we aspire to it. Once we recognize that we're going the best we can, it's much easier to work on those jobs that we need to accomplish because we no longer have an impossible standard that we feel we have to meet.
Negative feelings about yourself can also lead to procrastination. If you think that you can't do something, or that you can't do it right, then you're setting yourself up for failure before you even start. And this can cause you to procrastinate doing something that you really need to get done until you have no choice but to just jump in and do it. If you've put off or delayed doing this task, leaving yourself with very little time to accomplish it, chances are now you're only going to have time to have mediocre job. This starts the cycle of procrastination and failure.
Procrastination also happens when you put off doing those things that you don't like doing or things that are difficult to do. We have all have these types of jobs in our lives that we don't like but that just have to be done. The key to getting them done is the simple understanding of recognizing that they are tasks that need to be accomplished no matter what and the sooner we get started doing them, the quicker we'll be done.
Of course, knowing all these things that lead to postponing tasks that need to be accomplished doesn't mean that eliminating procrastination is an easy thing to do. Eliminating procrastination takes awareness and the desire to work on an area of your life that is causing you problems.
part 1 of 2 series..
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