One Bad Habit Between You and Success: Procrastination

The deadline for important work is just a day ahead. You are still in the phase of thinking to start working. You know it is now difficult or impossible to complete it within this time. 

What happened next? Would you be able to complete that work? Would you ask for more time and repeat this behavior? Why and how would you lose your focus?

Many of us in our daily routine lose focus from important tasks and waste time on unnecessary tasks. We usually spend much time scrolling down social media. Fortunately or unfortunately, we now have many available options and social media platforms. When we are fed up with one we usually shift to others. Sometimes when we gather ourselves and push to start the real task something comes to our mind and we go to make coffee, sleep, etc.

All these behaviors are because you are in a situation of procrastination. It needs attention otherwise many times it leads to severe problems in our life. It can take to situations when you lose everything job, work, business, etc. 

But the good news is that you are not alone in this problem. Some research shows that more than 95 % of us are somehow procrastinating. This article will give you in-depth knowledge about this issue and try to resolve the problems relating to it. But keep in mind, in the end, the effort is yours as you are the one who has to work hard and change your habits.

Laziness is not Procrastination
Laziness is not Procrastination

Difference Between Laziness and Procrastination:

Many times people mix procrastination with laziness. However, they are completely different situations. 

Laziness relates to inactivity and resistance to doing work. You become lethargic and don’t want to get yourself involve in any activity.

Whereas procrastinating is living in your comfort zone. It is an active process where you always want to work but could not able to do that on time. 

You don’t want to come out of your comfort zone and get yourself involved in easy unnecessary tasks. In this way, you lose your focus on the real workload. This results in delays and many other workplace problems.

Procrastination for a long time leads to demotivation, sometimes job loss, loss in business, productivity, and eventually mental health problems.

How to Stop Procrastination:

Getting rid of procrastination is a difficult task. This is because most of the time it comes from bad habits. So it has no one-time solution. One has to go through a process and give time and energy to get out of the comfort zone and start doing tasks on time.

Few steps that can take away procrastination are the following:

  1. Recognition:

First of all, you should know that you start delaying work or tasks. Recognition is the first step of every problem. Once you get to know about your bad habit then you start finding the solutions. 

Observe yourself and your behavior of daily routine. Are you skipping your to-do list? Are you delaying an important task again and again? Whether you spend your time on social media, reading emails, and unnecessary things? Are you always waiting for the right mood?

If the answer is yes, definitely you are procrastinating. There are many procrastinating quizzes available on the internet. Fill any of them and find your situation.

  1. Find Reasons for Procrastination:

Observe your reason for delaying. You are doing this based on many reasons. For example:

Reasons and Solutions:

  1. Sometimes you feel some task is too boring and you skip that and perform the rest. You can always find ways to make it interesting for you. You should announce a reward for that task. Give yourself a treat after completion. Have your favorite burger or ice cream.
  2. You can procrastinate due to the unavailability of a small object, device, or something. I remember doing this in the past when I delayed a task for more than a month just because I don’t have a proper chair to sit in. Go buy that important thing that is becoming a bottleneck for your work. This is because no matter how much you procrastinate, eventually, you have to buy that device or something.
  3. Many times we are unable to complete a task just because we want some information or mentorship. Although the person is just a call away, yet we spend all our time to call now or a moment later. Whenever you are in this situation remember to make a call at once.
  4. You can delay something just you are unanswerable to anyone and so don’t have any deadline or something. In this situation, you should tell someone or announce in some group of your contacts. In this way, you will do work for your reputation. This condition occurs many times to freelancers, self-employed, and entrepreneurs.
  5. If you are perfectionists, there are chances when you don’t start doing a task just because you don’t have many skills to do. You need to jump into and take chances because people who take chances, always become successful.
  6. Moreover, fear of failure is another reason. Not only failure some people even fear success. They think success will make them busy and increase workload. To get out of this situation it is important to get motivation and stop fearing. Read success stories of failures and victory.
Procrastinating due to Poor Decision Making
Poor Decision Making
  1. Poor decision-making ability also leads to procrastination. It may come due to overthinking. When you are unable to make a decision, what will you do? You do nothing and things get delayed. It is important to understand here that you only have to make decisions according to the best of your knowledge. Making that decision good for you is not in your hands. It is upon almighty that turn decision best for you.

Bottom Line:

It is important for a procrastinator to adopt some anti-procrastination strategies and work intensively to get rid of this bad habit. I think that this one bad habit is in between you and your success. It hinders you to become successful. Overcome this one thing of delaying tasks, no one can stop you from achieving your goals. Make to-do lists, organize yourself, get out of your comfort zone, and achieve whatever you imagine.

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