You don’t procrastinate only because you're lazy
‘Procrastination is the thief of time’
Everyone procrastinates; you procrastinate, I procrastinate, everyone procrastinates except well, people that are just too good. In as much as we all procrastinate, some people tend to do, some more than others.
When someone procrastinates a task, we often think that they are being lazy or unserious about it. That’s true for some people, however, that isn’t exactly true for all.
Procrastination is simply the action of delaying or postponing something.
If you procrastinate a lot, it can be frustrating because you want to do something; you have to do something yet you don’t. If you're anything like me, you tend to beat yourself about it. ‘Why am I like this?’, ‘What is wrong with me?’ ‘Don’t you ever learn?’ Sound familiar? Well, I think you should take it easy on yourself. One way to get better is to actually know exactly why you procrastinate doing something and to find a practical solution. Good thing you're reading this.
Procrastination can be dangerous especially when it’s done frequently, worse is if you don’t even know that you procrastinate. You're probably wondering how one wouldn’t know they procrastinate but it’s a thing. Frequent procrastination can cause you to waste a lot of time you can use to be productive, it can cause you to lose lots of opportunities and to even grow. Procrastination also affects your self-esteem because you become unsure of your abilities plus that critical voice in your head can put you down and that can have an effect on your self-esteem.
Why do you really procrastinate?
There are several reasons why anyone procrastinates. People mostly think it’s due to laziness or not being serious enough but the truth is, sometimes it’s not laziness and often times, the actions or projects they people procrastinate are very much important to them.
When it comes to procrastination, you need to know why you keep procrastinating a task. Ask yourself the following questions:
· Why am I postponing this task?
· What about this task makes me not want to do it?
· What would make it easier for me to do the task?
When you ask these questions, you can come up with a whole lot of reasons and insight to why you keep shifting an action. Below are possible reasons you procrastinate:
You feel overwhelmed with everything around you
You are not sure exactly what to do or how to start. No clarity
You overestimate your ability or underestimate the task to be done and simply think you have enough time
You think you can’t do the task
You don’t see the reward of what you want to do just yet and that discourages you, so motivation is low
You're exhausted from doing other things that you don’t have the physical or mental strength to do the task
You're simply indecisive and don’t know what choice to make
Anxiety, you simply feel anxious about the task
You simply don’t like the task you're to do
You fear the feedback you will get from doing the task will be negative
You want it to be perfect and so you wait for things to be perfect before actually doing the task. Example is not writing that e-book because you want everything you write to make sense
Fear of failure
Self-sabotaging. For instance. Because you have a feeling it will go well, you don’t do so because you feel you don’t deserve it or you will not handle the success well
You don’t think the task is worth it
You're suffering from a mental illness like depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
You choose instant gratification instead of delayed gratification
And of course, plain old laziness and unseriousness
Beating procrastination takes a lot of discipline and willfulness. Knowing why you procrastinate can help you know what to do in order to get the task done. For instance, if you procrastinate because you really don’t know what exactly to do, you can ask more questions about the task, you can make the goals more specific or you make the task smaller and in steps so you know what exactly to do at every point.