What is Procrastination and How to deal with it?
When it comes to being successful, habits plays a major role and one habit which is dominant in deciding that, is Procrastination.
Procrastination plays a vital role in our life because there are two type of procrastination. One help us to achieve and other one makes people lose. Sounds funny right? Lets see about procrastination in detail.
What is Procrastination?
Piers Steel, one of the well recognized author on the topic of Procrastination defines it as "to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay." But some other authors think that procrastination is a combination of Postponement and Irrationality, So any task delayed without relational reason should be called procrastination.
In simple words, Procrastination is a habit of postponing an activity or a task for various non-rational reasons which may result in consequences such as stress, pressure or failure.
What causes us to procrastinate?
Some people even don't know they are procrastinators and it became part of their lifestyle. To remove this habit from our life style, first we have to know why we procrastinate. Until we find the cause and fix, we cannot avoid the effects.
There are multiple reasons for one to procrastinate, Lets see them one by one,
Coping responses (The worrier):
When some difficult task at hand, people tend to avoid them instead of trying to complete them. When the mind choose to have the immediate pleasure instead of the stressful environment of the task in hand. For example, A student has to prepare for a stressful exam which is due in a month.
The exam is inevitable and the ideal plan is to study on daily basis to score good. If the student choose to play games instead of preparation just to avoid and escape from the pressure of exams, he/she is procrastinating.
This kind of procrastination happens to avoid stressful tasks or problem solving situations and try to distract it with some instant pleasure activities.
How to deal with it?
Before procrastinating, ask yourself, whether you are avoiding it to avoid stress? and is the pleasure activity really worth and what will be the consequence of avoiding the important task?
This type of procrastination can be dealt, if one understands the importance of the task and prepares the mind well.
Fear of Failure or Perfectionist:
The concept of perfectionism and The fear of failure drive people to procrastinate until they fail. People procrastinate, thinking that they are not prefect enough to start a task and they may fail with their current skillset. This waiting for perfect moment and fear, cause anxiety and stress in a long run when people miss the opportunity.
How to dealt with it?
One simple solution for this type of procrastination is to start right now. No need to worry about the results and don't wait for the perfect moments, Just start it.
Busy Bees:
Some people have multiple tasks at their hand and often think they have lot of time for all their tasks. These kind of people are poor at time management and often prioritize the easiest tasks first but procrastinate the important ones. Pareto rule states that our 20% of tasks results in 80% of results and the remaining 80% of tasks only contribute 20% of the results. People who thinks themselves as busy always tend to prioritize unwanted 20% of tasks and end up with fail to do the important tasks for their personal or professional goals. Often these important tasks are tough one so they plan to do it later.
How to deal with it?
To deal with it, A proper planning of tasks and time management is important. prioritizing tasks according to the importance of them is essential.
Desultory Person:
People fall in this category starts the tasks with much enthusiasm but through time, give up on the tasks and set eye on a different goal. They procrastinate the tasks of previous goals and move on to the next one. These people often starts multiple targets and have difficulties in completing them. So they leave them and go to the next one.
How to deal with it?
There is only one solution for this procrastination is available, which is not to start a new goal or plan new tasks until the current one is finished.
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Positive Procrastination:
Sometimes procrastination is considered to have positive effect. As an effective Time Management rule, procrastination of unimportant tasks are considered as Positive procrastination. It gives us time to concentrate on things what is important to us and helps us to avoid stress on uncompleted unimportant tasks. It happens with proper planning and precise execution of tasks.
Also in some extent, it is believed procrastination is needed for creative tasks. Some studies indicate procrastinators are more creative than the precrastinators.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrastination
https://professional.dce.harvard.edu/blog/the-perks-of-procrastination/
