By k_vohsen
Is procrastination affecting and disrupting your road to success? Dont fret, you’re not the only one. In fact, EVERYONE procrastinates. But catch the point — Successful people knows how to CONTROL their procrastination and strike into action.
Are you any one of the below:-
- You have things to do, important things or mundane things, and you put off doing them until the last minute. Worse still, they’re badly completed without quality.
- You know that you need to complete this before the deadline, instead rushing for deadline, you start to think of reasons to answer late submissions.
-You have planned everything that you need to do the day after, YET you felt lazy and called off the plan the very next day.
-You know that this is the path that will lead you to your goals and success, yet you experienced self resistance and somehow, you begin to convince yourself that following that path won’t lead you to success after all.
Why people procrastinate even though they know it’s the number one killer to success?
*Because You Are Afraid. No one likes to admit that they fear something, but fear might just be the reason you put off doing what you know you should do. Whether it’s fear of failure or fear of success, it’s still fear. Fear is a paralyzing emotion. It has the ability to stop us in our tracks-literally. If you procrastinate compulsively, and who doesn’t enjoy doing that, then you may fear that once you’re successful at something you’ll suffer the compulsion to continually be successful. This will require you to work and finish what you’ve started and that will cut into your compulsion to procrastinate. It’s a never ending cycle. Fear can cause us to procrastinate.
*Because You Don’t Think it’s Important Enough. You don’t place a high enough priority on the task at hand, it’s not vital and so it’s not worthy of you beginning it.
You know the task needs to be done and you may already have decided that you’re the one who must do it. However, there is always something else more important on your to-do list that keeps bumping that particular job back to the bottom.
*You Don’t Know Enough to do the Task. You may procrastinate beginning a project because you simply don’t know everything you need to know in order to complete the task. You may not have consciously admitted this to yourself, but deep down you know it and it’s coming out as an aversion to starting the project. You need to determine whether or not this is because you haven’t collected all the data on what you have to do, or simply because you want to stall for more time.
*You Haven’t Committed To the Task. You may think the task should belong to someone else, it’s not really your job to do and it is a waste of time. If this is how you’re looking at this particular task, then you need to ask yourself what will happen to you if you don’t complete the job.
*You Just Don’t Want To Do It. Everyone is faced with jobs in life that they simply don’t want to do. They’re either disgusting, like having to clean toilets, or they’re dangerous, like climbing up on the roof and cleaning the leaves out from the rain gutters. We put off doing the task at hand because we simply do not want to do it. Period. There is no underlying psychological reason for putting it off. It’s that recalcitrant two-year old in us coming out to say “I don’t wanna and I’m not gonna”.
*You Could Just Be Lazy. Yes, that’s what I said. I know it’s not an easy thing to hear about yourself, but sometimes facing the truth about ourselves can help us overcome bad habits and succeed where we otherwise may have failed. You need to find a way to motivate yourself out of your habit of being lazy in order to stop procrastinating.
Now, before you want success (or even dream of becoming successful), you need to first eliminate these irritating factors. Let’s take a look at the possible ways:
-Learn How You Procrastinate. Do you think if you ignore the task at hand it will eventually go away and not bother you? Do you over-estimate or under-estimate the degree of difficulty in completing the task? Do you scoff at the impact not finishing the task will have on your future?
Maybe you take a short break, but let that ‘’short’ break turn into an all night event, and therefore put off getting to that task you need to finish.
You might focus on one part of the job to the exclusion of the remaining task and thereby never finish the entire thing.
Once you recognize how you procrastinate, you’ll better be able to put a stop to it. Often we don’t even realize that we are procrastinating until it’s too late and we’ve missed a deadline.
-Throw Out Those Procrastination Myths. “I work best under pressure”. That’s the myth that nearly kept me from graduating from college. Once you believe that you can only work under pressure, you’re giving yourself permission to procrastinate. This can snowball and create serious problems for you if you have several deadlines looming.
“I can’t do this unless I have five uninterrupted hours”. This is simply another stalling technique that master procrastinators use for telling themselves it’s ok to not start the project because they won’t have time to finish it. Hello? If you don’t start the task you’ll never finish it. It’s ok to start something and then stop so you can finish it later. Sometimes the simple act of beginning a task will break the cycle of procrastination and allow you to finish your job.
“I can’t do this unless it’s perfect.” The problem that most procrastinators have is that we are too hard on ourselves, demanding perfection where perfection is impossible. If you think you can’t start your term paper until you have THE perfect opening sentence, then you have once again given yourself permission to put it off.
-Change Your Attitude. Often times we don’t begin something we have to do because we tell ourselves how difficult it’s going to be, or how disgusting the job is and how much we’re going to hate doing it. By giving ourselves reverse-pep talks we give ourselves permission to avoid beginning the task at hand. When you hear yourself doing this, change your attitude. Be like the Little Engine that Could and tell yourself that you CAN do this, it’s not that difficult or disgusting. If you tell yourself that you don’t know how to do a particular task, change that around to tell yourself that you can learn as you go. It’s all a matter of mind over matter. If you think you can, you can.
-Learn How to Tell Time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you already know how to tell time and you can even do it on a clock without a digital readout. But did you know that world class procrastinators have unrealistic views of the time it takes to accomplish something? It’s true. You’ll tell yourself that a certain task will only take three hours to complete, so you really don’t have to start it right this minute. You can wait till later and then you’ll finish it up in three hours. What you fail to realize is that other things can happen along the way to distract you and stretch that three hours into six and pretty soon you’ve missed that deadline. Starting now is a good best option.
-Make a List. Write down a list of what you need to accomplish. Put it in order of importance, highest to lowest. Next, start with number one and work your way down the list, checking off items as you go. Not only will this help you be organized, but putting those little check marks next to items you’ve finished will give you a mental boost and help you feel successful. And who doesn’t like to feel successful?
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