Preventing Procrastination

What causes procrastination? And why does it affect our daily lives so deeply? Some people think that procrastinators are lazy, they are just avoiding chores, work, duties and tasks that need to be completed. This is not the case.

In my experience, procrastination has three root causes ;

1. Overwhelm

2. Overthinking

3. Anxiety

Procrastination starts when we feel out of control for one reason or another, and why do we feel out of control? In general it occurs when we have been given too many tasks to carry out at one specific time and the expectations are too great for us to deal with - hello overwhelm.

So what should we do ?

My first thing to do in this situation is to stop!!!!

THE PRESSURE

The minute I feel the pressure of overwhelm, I stop everything. Stop whatever task I’m doing, stop thinking about all that I need to complete, stop eating if I’m doing that. Step away from my PC, tablet or phone; no matter what you are doing just stop and visualise the stop sign every time this happens.

The Action

Take a minimum of 10 - 15 minutes, slope your eyes, deep breath in, hold it and breathe out, repeat over and over for the 10 - 15 minutes, your mind will wander, try to bring it back in and focus on your breathing. Complete this exercise and take a further 5 minutes to centre yourself and come back to your surroundings.

WOO WOO

I know you’re screaming at me right now and telling me that you don’t have time for this woo woo shenanigan, but I promise you it will prepare your mind to handle all of the tasks ahead of you.

If however you do have time on your hands, I would suggest you do nothing today, go read a book take a walk or whatever it is that fills you with joy and then come back to focus on the task in hand.

Fear

Overwhelm is fuelled by fear, a fear of not being able to complete the given tasks within the given time frame and by giving into this thought process, we do exactly that, we do not complete the task within the time frame.

Overthinking

Overwhelms sister is overthinking, as if being overwhelmed is not bad enough, we then begin the process of overthinking and this holds us back even further.

We have now gone from feeling unable to complete the task to filling our own minds with every reason why we can not fulfill the task, convincing ourselves that it is impossible.

Feeding our own inner villain who is reminding us of all of our self doubt and self sabotaging reasons, before you know it we have now backed ourselves into a corner in the deepest cave of our souls into believing that we can’t do this.

Anxiety

Hello anxiety. The worst case scenario takes us to a place of anxiety, our overwhelm and overthinking have now put so much pressure on our own personality’s that we are now anxious about completing said task.

We no longer believe in ourselves and take up the ostrich position of burying our heads in the sand, hoping this will all just go away on its own.

Resolution

All of this could have been resolved so easily with a lot less pain to ourselves. Procrastination can be prevented with a few simple steps.

1. Change your habits

2. Breakdown each task into manageable bites.

3. Don’t agree to more tasks than you can comfortably handle.

4. Don’t let tasks build up.

5. Delegate smaller tasks to others.

6. Focus on 1 task at a time.

7. Remember no one is perfect.

Procrastination is nothing more than an action of delaying or postponing action.

xx Lei

THE BREEDING GROUND OF FEAR IS PROCRASTINATION AND IN ACTION. WE OVERCOME THEM NOT BY PREPARATION BUT BY TAKING ACTION