Procrastination covers a very broad scope and before individuals can fully understand and overcome their procrastination environment of behavior, they need to familiarize themselves with the basics of procrastination.
Brian Tracy said “Losers procrastinate on the important things that can make a significant difference in their lives.”
The following information can help you gain clearer insight and understanding about what procrastination is and is not.
According to Psychology Today, procrastination tends to reflect a person’s struggles with self-control. For habitual procrastinators, who represent approximately 20% of the population, “I don’t feel like it” comes to take precedence over their goals or responsibilities, and can set them on a downward spiral of negative emotions that further deter future effort.”
If you have been called out for being a procrastinator you may have been called lazy, slow, a dilly-dally, unsure or indecisive. I think all of us have procrastinate from time to time for various reasons and would like to have tactics to know how to beat this nefarious trait.
Make sure you read the rest of this article to learn the basics of procrastination and why we do procrastinate….
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What Are the Basics Of Procrastination?
Let’s start with a definition of procrastination by Psychology Today — Procrastination is the gap between intention and action. You wake up with the intention to do your taxes. But for some reason it is aversive, and you keep putting it off.
My definition of procrastination goes like this… procrastination is the practice of delaying things or putting tasks that are less urgent in preference to more urgent ones. This is also the habit of doing pleasurable things in place of those that are less pleasurable only to find out that they have putted off impending works on later time or even the “last minute’’.
Procrastination is the opposite of ideal productivity.
To produce is to pull and work forward to get things done while to procrastinate is to push things forward for tomorrow, next week or probably never.
Procrastination also involves a degree of self-deception – Essentially, procrastinators are conscious of their behavior and the unfortunate consequences, however changing their ways involves much greater effort than finishing the task in front of them.
This habit or practice can fill your life with shame. There are even instances that some individuals are cursing themselves due to their laziness, inability to concentrate on important tasks at hand and the human tendency of being easily laid to more immediate and easier gratifications.
Procrastination sometimes comes with good reasons and that is time procrastinating is a time spent to figure out things and plan for future actions to make.
The positive side of procrastination is that this allows individuals to have enough time to sort out complicates issues and generate ideas.
It cannot be denied that there are really inevitable instances that individuals need to embrace the habit of procrastination.
But in them extent that this becomes an alarming habit and starts to pose negative impacts to your life, procrastination must be stopped at all cost.
What Procrastination Is Not
A procrastinator will put off doing things by leaving important tasks to the very last moments or spend their time on something less important. However the important thing to recognize is that procrastination is not a synonym for laziness.
The difference is lazy people are fine without doing anything. Procrastinators, on the other hand, actually have the desire accomplish something but can’t push themselves to get started.
That’s why it is a good idea to use the word procrastination instead of laziness. It provides a much more accurate description of your situation. By giving the proper name to your problem will allow you to begin working on a solution.
Also don’t confuse procrastination with relaxation. There is a definitely a time for relaxation because it recharges your batteries where procrastination drains your energy. When you are drained of energy the greater the chance you have of being stressed or depressed which will have a greater chance of you putting off your duties and responsibilities.
With this picture in mind of what procrastination is not this means the opposite of procrastination is actually completing your responsibilities, being able to relax, deal with your assignments well which will lead to long term happiness.
Why Do People Procrastinate?
Knowing the basics of procrastination is not enough. In order for individuals to gain clearer understanding, they need to know the exact reasons why they procrastinate. Individuals procrastinate due to the following common reasons:
- Lack of motivation
- Lack of interest
- Skill deficits
- Fear of both success and failure
- Stress
- Laziness
- Lack of Discipline
- Lack of skills
- Perfectionism
These are the reasons triggering individuals to procrastinate and definitely yield to negative consequences if not addressed properly.
Other reasons why individuals procrastinate are lack of idea or knowledge on what really needs to be done, lack of eagerness to do something, not caring if something is done or not, lack of mood or initiative to get things started and many more.
The negative impacts brought by this practice are given so there is no valid reasons to let yourself be trapped within this habit.
Good thing is that there are countless ways on how to overcome and beat procrastination.
Individuals just need to exert an effort to adopt these ways and put them into actions. Aside from learning the basic of procrastination and knowing the reasons why individuals procrastinate, there are still more powerful ways of beating procrastination.
Possible and powerful ways include changing your procrastination environment, creating a timeline, getting inspiration, breaking bigger tasks into small and manageable pieces and the list goes on.
