Its a act of fueled by weakness, lazyness and a failure to think about the things which we have to accomplish.
Procrastination may result in stress, a sense of guilt and crisis, severe loss of personal productivity,
as well as social disapproval for not meeting responsibilities or
commitments. These feelings combined may promote further
procrastination.
procrastination is strongly related to impulsiveness, this area of the
brain is responsible for executive brain functions such as planning, impulse control,
attention, and acts as a filter by decreasing distracting stimuli from
other brain regions. Damage or low activation in this area can reduce an
individual's ability to filter out distracting stimuli, ultimately
resulting in poorer organization, a loss of attention and increased
procrastination.
we end up spending hours upon hours doing “easier” work or escaping via TV or music.
procrastinators use include:
- Avoidance: Where we avoid the locale or situation where the task takes place (e.g., a graduate student avoiding going to University).
- Distraction: Where we engage or immerse ourselves in other behaviors or actions to prevent awareness of the task (e.g., intensive videogame playing or Internet surfing)
- Humour: Making a joke of one's procrastination, that the slapstick or slipshod quality of one's aspirational goal striving is funny.
- Reframing: Pretending that getting an early start on a project is harmful to your performance and by procrastinating, leaving most work to the last moment, you will consistently do better (e.g., "I'm most creative at 4:00 AM in the morning without sleep.").
- Denial: Pretending that what you are doing isn't actually procrastinating but needs to be done instead of the more important task.
How to avoid procrastination-
1. Stop thinking. Start doing.
“To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.”
Eva Young
Eva Young
A
bit of planning can certainly help you to achieve what you want to
achieve. A lot of planning and thinking tends to have the opposite
effect.
You
think and think and try to come up with “the perfect plan”. A plan
where you don’t have to make mistakes, where you will never be rejected,
where there will be no pain or difficulties. Such a thing does of
course not exist. But as long as you work on that plan you can protect
yourself.
2. Don’t blow a task out of proportion.
“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.”
Olin Miller
Olin Miller
”Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.”
George Claude Lorimer
George Claude Lorimer
By
over thinking and putting things off you are not only trying to protect
yourself from pain. You also make mountains out of molehills. The
quotes above are so true it isn’t even funny. The more hours and days
you put something off the worse it grows in your mind.
Because
you are dwelling on it. And so it expands in your mind. And since you
are putting it off you are probably thinking about it in a negative way.
This makes a little thing a big Godzilla, a horrible beast that is
threatening to ruin your life.
So plan a little and then take action.
Often
you don’t even have to plan, you have been there before and you know
what needs to be done. So stop thinking and just do it no matter how you
feel and what you think. How you feel right now changes as quickly as
the weather so it’s not the perfect guidance system or anything. And you
don’t have to obey what it says (it’s not chains made of iron). You can
just do what you know is right anyway.
3. Just take the first step.
“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
When
you start to look too far into the future any task or project can seem
close to impossible. And so you shut down because you become overwhelmed
and start surfing the internet aimlessly instead. That is one of the
reasons why it is good to plan for the future but then to shift your
focus back to today and the present moment.
Then
you just focus on taking the first step today. That is all you need to
focus on, nothing else. By taking the first step you change you mental
state from resistant to
“hey, I’m doing this, cool”. You put yourself in
state where you become more positive and open, a state where you may
not be enthusiastic about taking the next step after this first one but
you are at least accepting it. And so you can take the next step. And
the next one after that.
The
thing is, you can’t see the whole staircase anyway and it will shift
and reveal itself along the way. That’s why the best of plans tend to
fall apart at least a bit as you start to put it into action. You
discover that your map of reality doesn’t look like reality.
4. Start with the hardest task of your day.
“Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.”
Dale Carnegie
Dale Carnegie
Maybe
you have an important call to make that you also fear might be
uncomfortable. Maybe you know you have gotten behind on answering your
emails and have big pile to dig into. Maybe you have the last five pages
of your paper to finish.
Whatever it may be, get it out of your way the first thing you do.
If
you start your day this way you will feel relieved. You feel relaxed
and good about yourself. And the rest of the day – and your to-do list –
tends to feel a lot lighter and easier to move through. It’s amazing
what difference this one action makes.
5. Just make a decision. Any decision.
“In
a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to
do, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can
do is nothing.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
We
feel bad when we sit on our hands and don’t take action because it’s
unnatural. The natural thing is to be a decisive human and take action.
When
you procrastinate you want to do something but you don’t take the
action that is in alignment with that thought. You become conflicted
within.
What
you do always sends signals back to you about who you are. Sure, doing
affirmations where you say to yourself that you are confident can help
you. But taking the confident actions you want to take over and over
again is what really builds your self confidence and a self-image of you
being a confident person. When you procrastinate you lower your self
esteem and send signals back to yourself that you are a ,well, a kinda
lame and indecisive person.
6. Face your fear.
“Procrastination is the fear of success. People procrastinate because they are afraid of the success that they know will result if they move ahead now. Because
success is heavy, carries a responsibility with it, it is much easier
to procrastinate and live on the “someday I’ll” philosophy.”
Denis Waitley
Denis Waitley
I
think this is true. It’s easier to live on that “someday…” thought.
It’s harder to just take action. To risk looking like a fool. To make
mistakes, stumble and not avoid that pain. To take responsibility for
your own life.
The
easier choice can come with a sense of comfort, with a certain level of
success, pangs of regret for all the things you never dared to do and a
vague sense of being unfulfilled. You wonder about what would have
happened if you had taken more action and more chances.
The harder choice gives you, well, who knows? But it will sure make your feel more alive.
7. Finish it.
“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task”
William James
William James
“Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they started.”
David Allen
David Allen
Not
taking the first step to start accomplishing something can make you
feel bad. But not finishing what you have started can also leave you in a
sort of negative funk. You feel fatigued or stressed and sometimes you
don’t even know why. It’s like someone zapped your inner power.
If
that is the case, go over tasks and projects what you are currently
involved in. Is there something there you know you want to finish but
haven’t yet? Try to get that finished as soon as you can you will start
to feel a whole lot better.
Just
be careful. Don’t think you have to finish everything you started. If a
book sucks, read something else. Using this as an excuse to quit
something that feels hard or unfamiliar is not a good idea. But there is
no law that says that everything has to be completed.