Procrastination

To keep delaying something that must be done, often because it is unpleasant or boring is known as procrastination. Postponing work because we don’t want to face it for various reasons is common for all of us. But some among us are compulsive procrastinators. They never attempt anything at the appropriate time or complete it.

Why?

• They are lazy… if it can be done later, why do it now? Escapists resort to procrastination often.
• Fear of work: they are scared of completing work on time; it can have repercussions such as others increasing their expectations on them, more work coming their way
• They would not want others to benefit from their prompt completion of work…it’s a good way to tease or even punish others
• Fear that anything done immediately will be done badly, inappropriately or even completely wrong; fear that things done quickly will always go wrong
• They enjoy mulling over things than actually doing them…if done quickly, this enjoyable rumination is not possible
• In the misconception that they have enough time to actually do it later

What happens ?

• For students: procrastination in sitting to study seriously for examinations can become a very costly mistake; as they expect, they don’t have time for that. Their assessment often of the time needed to master the study material goes wrong. Result? Failure or poor grades, which cannot to offset easily
• For office workers: procrastination often leads to piled up work on the desk which takes forever to clear, curses from office bosses, customers and sundry others
• For house wives/ house husbands: A house run late on every task is a proper mess in itself jeopardizing health and well being all its members. Procrastination in household work such as repairs, cleaning, clearing out unusable things etc. this leads to piling up the things to be cleared, the muck to be cleaned and all round unpleasantness of living in a messy place.
• For earners: procrastination in spending now verses postponing for later. Costs escalate and sometimes become out of reach too. Loans get out of hand, interests pile up and financial disaster is not far away.
• For adults in general: with regard to health care, medical checkups etc. procrastination can be literally life taking! Postponement of testing, visits to doctors can lead to identifying ailments much later than they should have been and thereby, life is put to risk.
• For property owners: procrastination in selling or willing them to others can become very troublesome in later years. Life is clearly an unsure entity; none of know when we will leave this world. Writing the will, selling that piece of property when we are in both mental and physical good state is most important, if we don’t want our near and dear to suffer agonies later after our time in getting the assts.
• For writers/researchers/ scientists: the field of study itself might change by the time they sit down to put their ideas into a project, do their work. Complete rethinking might become necessary. Sometimes a life time’s opportunity might be lost.
• For all of us: procrastination can make us miss out on opportunities, lose time, lose money, and in some cases, name and fame too!
• For all of us: by the time you make that decision, the offers by the marketing entity is no longer available, the item has gone out of fashion, your family no longer is looking forward to having it, children have outgrown their interest in it, and worst case scenario, the person looking forward to having something may no longer be around!
• In love affairs, procrastination has seen many lose out on the love of their life…plenty of such sob stories around us!

What can be done?

This is a hard one. Recently some researchers have pointed out that procrastinators become so due to childhood abuse, trauma, apart from lack of motivation due to poor parenting and up brining processes. It is an uphill task to reverse this trend for them. But try they must to overcome procrastination.

1. Start with simple works to be completed timely… Clearing one shelf at a time, Read up that single chapter ,Study one section at a time
2. Allocate specific time in the day for starting/doing tasks; this helps to set aside other distractions to concentrate for that duration on the specific task
3. Listen and comply to the pressures others put on you once in a while; your ego can be put to rest for some time and obey others insistence and do the task, complete it. You will realize that that satisfies the ego as much as procrastinating on it!
4. Ruminate on the negative impacts of NOT doing things on time…this can become a big motivator to start doing things on time
5. Try energizing activities such as exercise, doing mental activity games, mindfulness activities, to activate you and shed laziness and procrastination
6. push yourself to accompany someone who is quick in deciding and doing things, once in a while…this might motivate you to do the same.

All said and done ‘Procrastination’ is a habit hard to shrug off. Concerted effort is needed in accepting you are a procrastinator first and then work on it. Good luck on that. In the meanwhile, good luck to persons around you who are putting up patiently with you on this!