How to Overcome Procrastination

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Procrastination is a common issue that accompanies the majority of human activities, tasks, and obligations. It can be easy to overlook procrastination, because of its subtleness. For its insidious nature, it is always hard to recognize this issue and address it properly. Procrastination tends to lead to inactivity and an underlying sense of guilt. Maybe we used to think that postponing things we have to do is not a big thing, but in a long term, it can have many consequences in every area of our lives. Because of procrastination, we can encounter a lot of difficulties in our relationships, career, and self-esteem. Experts have noticed two main reasons that underlie this habit. One of them is fear in its different shapes and forms: fear of success, fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of criticizing, etc. Another reason is how good or bad we manage our emotions. Many daily tasks require effort, hard work, and self-discipline to be done. If we decide to postpone our tasks for some pleasurable activity, which prevents us from doing the task correctly or even finishing it at all, then we procrastinate. We give priority to things that do not matter much to us, but give us positive emotions. To overcome procrastination, the article “HOW PROCRASTINATION IS KILLING YOUR SUCCESS – and WHAT YOU CAN DO to STOP IT!” gives us some useful suggestions.

1. Realize that what you are delaying doing is unnecessary

2. Evaluate why you are delaying things and the cost of putting them off

3. Make a list of what you want and what task needs to get done and mark it on your calendar

4. Reflect on accomplishing the task and SEEING it get done. Anticipate the rewards.

5. Commit to taking action

6. Start the task and begin

Recent studies have shown that procrastination in a long run can be detrimental to our health. It provokes a sense of guilt, loss of control in our everyday life and diminishes our sense of self-worth. On the contrary, when we manage to reach our goals we feel more worthy and more self-confident. According to experts, procrastination is not only the problem with time management; it can have false and limiting beliefs in its background. One of them is usually “I am not good enough”. However, in many other cases, the need for procrastination can be simple – boring task. Experts suggest letting go of the idea that everything we do, have to be interesting and motivating. They said that by doing the boring task first can greatly motivate us. The very fact that we have done it will release us from guilt and leave us more time for other activities.