“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday and avoiding today.” - Wayne Dyer

Procrastination is present in every aspect of our lives, and we have mastered it to perfection. We have been practising from soon after we were born. During our younger years (and to for some even now), we procrastinated in doing our chores, we procrastinated in studying at school, college and university and during our adult life we procrastinate during work and other activities.

Picture by: brdavids

In this first post, I outline some of the reasons why I think we procrastinate as well as looking what could happen if procrastination goes untreated. Then, we finish this post with outlining the first few steps that need to be taken to overcome procrastination.

Why do we procrastinate?

Generally speaking we tend to avoid the “why I am doing this?”, and rather just focus on “how do I solve it?” That’s all good and well, but there are times when this question needs to be tackled, especially if the problem is a persisting one and if we want to move forward.

The idea here is to understand why you procrastinate, so next time you are able to identify and overcome it. Here are 9 common reasons of procrastination:

1. You don’t want to do it: sometimes it is just this simple, you don’t want to do something so you keep putting it off until you have no choice but to do it
2. It’s difficult: if something is difficult or you perceive it to be difficult then you are likely to either do a easier task or tell yourself to not do it
3. Time consuming: similarly, if something is going to take up a lot of your time, then you simply keep putting it off for later and reassure yourself that you can’t commit that amount of time on it right now
4. Perfectionism: if everything needs to be perfect, then everything requires a lot of effort. You’d rather miss out the task, then risk doing it so it’s not perfect.
5. Commitment: you don’t understand why you should be doing this, or why it’s important or you might even think that it’s a waste of time. Then would you waste your time on this? Leave it for later, and later and later
6. Failure: if you fail then you’ll have to answer those questions. If you fear that you may fail the task then you will try and avoid doing the task completely.
7. Fear: apart from the fear of failure, there is also the fear of success (if you succeed then you have to repeat your success) and fear of not knowing what to do next. Sometimes it seems easier to ignore the task then think about all of these things
8. Frustration: if you have a especially low frustration threshold, and know something will be difficult, challenging or frustrating in any other way the we just move on to something more entertaining
9. History: we’ve been frustrating for all these years, so why change now

Exercise: brainstorm some of the reasons why you most often procrastinate, if you’re stuck then try asking yourself these four questions:

• What do I usually do instead of doing the urgent thing?
• What would I rather do then working or studying?
• What do I tend to focus on when I sit down to get things done?
• How do I procrastinate?

The science behind it

In 2007 Psychological Bulletin published a paper by Piers Steel, titled “The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure”. In this paper Steel presented a mathematical formula for procrastination.

The equation calculates how desirable a task or choice will be (utility) to an individual. This is done by weighing up the expectation (E) of finishing a task and its value (V) against the persons desire to complete the task and how soon it needs to be done (ΓD).

If a tasks is not urgent, nor do you have the necessary skills or knowledge to complete the task then you are more likely to procrastinate. On the other hand, if you are confident in your ability and the task carried a tight deadline, then you would be less likely to procrastinate.

By the way, if you wish to read this article you can either download the PDF version here.

The procrastination cycle

The procrastination cycle is a simple idea that I scribbled down when brainstorming this post. I’ve decided to include it here to show the effect procrastination can have, and has on your work, life and health.

A couple of things to note from the diagram:

• There is too much stress
• There doesn’t seem to be any management
• There is illness
• By the end of the cycle the initial task is not done but discarded

We can, probably, never fully stop procrastinating, just like we can never realistically avoid stress. So the take home message is to learn how to manage procrastination and stress so it does not have a detrimental effect on your life or health.

The first step

Now we understand why we procrastinate and the effects it can have, it’s time to take action and overcome procrastination.

The very first step in working through procrastination is accepting the fact that you choose to procrastinate. Sure when asked, we all defend ourselves and usually start the first round of the blame-game. However, keep in mind that there is a fine line between taking responsibility and being too hard on yourself.

Make a conscious decision to not procrastinate any more or to at the very least reduce your procrastination to as little as possible, after all we’re not perfect! Ask yourself, “In what ways and where do I procrastinate?”.

Personally I find that I procrastinate more when I have a lot to do, and I procrastinate by doing the less urgent stuff. For example, I am procrastinating right now by working on this post instead of writing up a report I have to submit tomorrow!

We all procrastinate; don’t beat yourself up over it, sulking and drowning in your own tears! Admit it, accept that it is a problem, decide on what you will do, and then do it.

That’s it for part one, in part two of this post I go through a number of tips that can help drastically reduce procrastination. Don’t want to miss the next part, then you may want to subscribe to be notified when it’s published.

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