Procrastination; and how to stop it.
Often we procrastinate, we delay or postpone action, and we put off doing something. Procrastination is not laziness. These are two different concepts. Procrastination involves delaying unnecessarily, whereas laziness involves being voluntarily unwilling to exert necessary efforts. We procrastinate for all kinds of reasons:
Overwhelmed
Bad Mood
Disorganisation
Self Doubt etc.
"Make it happen" - iDrive HR
When we procrastinate, however, we can increase our levels of anxiety, stress, and feelings of self-blame, low self-esteem. These can all contribute to further procrastination. The strange thing about procrastination is that we procrastinate to avoid negative feelings, and to do this we are hard-wired to prioritise our short-term needs over longer-term needs. For example, we go do something that we find easy and we like to do.
All the time we do this, we feel more stressed about the thing we are not doing and the thing in which we are procrastinating, which then impacts our ability to think and make good decisions.
Here are 2 easy ways to overcome procrastination, and achieve your objectives/goals in your personal life or at work;
Break something down into very small ‘manageable’ ‘doable’ chunks and make a time commitment, perhaps with a reward for finishing the first chunk. Rewarding yourself for completing that part, will help you enjoy the task and begin the second chunk.
Find someone else to help you get started with the task, you can then continue on your own steam, feeling much better about completing the task.
Procrastination happens to many people, lots of the time and it even happens to teams and whole organisations! Prevent it using the above, and make it happen.