Why Are You Procrastinating!

Are you buying a house, selling a house, renovating a house, building a house, buying a christmas or birthday present or cleaning the car or buying that god forsaken HRV unit I told you to buy and are doing the whole I am thinking about it thing… Then your procratinating. Your simply not able to make your mind up on what you want to do because you have an emotional conflict that doesnt allow you to fully see the road ahead. And its a real Shame!
So what is procrastination?
It’s the dishes that never get done
It’s the laundry that sits in the laundry for days
It’s the cleaning and repair work that can wait till tomorrow
It’s the research that you just can’t start
It’s the emails and calls that you just dont make
It’s the bills that don’t get paid till they’re past do
It’s the questions you need to ask that you dont ask
It’s the house you wanted to look at today but never got their in time
It’s the wall you come up against when you try to start something
It’s the frustration of being behind . . .again
It’s the promise to never put things off. . .again
It’s all these things and more. . . Procrastination is the seemingly never ending battle to get things done on time. It’s about things being done late and the torture you go through to get them done at all. procrastination is about promises to change but not being able to for reasons you don’t understand, don’t accept, or don’t know what to do about.
Why do people procrastinate?
Most people assume that the reason that they procrastinate is because they lack will power. The idea is that some people have will power and others don’t as if will power is a commodity or a trait that is hard wired. The reality is that people who procrastinate demonstrate quite allot of will power for certain things.
People procrastinate because they experience emotions they don’t want to feel when they attempt to do things. Those emotions can be of helplessness, powerlessness, being overwhelmed, being controlled ,sad or resentful. The reasons a person has these feelings are not addressed by procrastinating but the feelings themselves are avoided for awhile.
Some rasons include;
Avoidance:
At the heart of procrastination is an approach to facing a challenge that utilizes avoidance. What is procrastination but avoiding your work? But the avoidance isn’t just of the work itself, it’s avoidance of the feelings that you have when you try to work.
Will:
Some people get to work or life and begin to question whether they have the ability or will power to dothe task ahead. For most people however the issue is more about will then will power or ability. When I talk about will I mean it in the term of whether they have the desire to be able to complete the task. Without strong desire it is too hard to get off the post.
Time:
Even if a person is sure they want to be do what it is they wish to do managing all the demandsin life is not easy. During your life you get to work, play or sleep. Many people can juggle all these things around but sometimes one will over take the other. Which means that one of the things you want to do will be taken away. Its as if you only get to choose 2 out of 3. This will cause people to lose their short term goal focus and jumble talks around.
Approach:
Even if a person is sure they know what they want and manages their time well there are other reasons that go into why someone might procrastinate. Sometimes its because the reason they wanted to do a task was to work toward something else but in tern didnt want to do that task because it gave off the emotion that they were not going to succeed. This can be deemed approach and its important to know that sometimes you have to look at things in another perspective to achieve the result you want.
Perfectionism:
Perfectionism contributes to procrastination in a variety of ways that such as…
* creates high expectations that feel difficult to meet so they are avoided
* makes the process of doing something too difficult
* causes a person to make the task unimportant
* causes a person not to care how their efforts turn out
* makes everything the person does mean too much
The common feelings that cause you to procrastinate are fear of failure, fear of success, the fear the task is to big, feeling as though your being controled or arent in control and self esteem.
So what does it take to overcome procrastination:
Well its an approach to dealing with the reasons you procrastinate that relies on the understanding of those reasons and not avoidance of them. In most cases a person who procrastinates doesn’t feel that they have a way to resolve the dilemma they face without the use of avoidance. Which means that they will procrastinate abuot trying to stop procrastinating. This circle will go on and on untill you accept what you are doing and look into yourself. You need to first understand what is happening and then work on it.
Each time you feel “stuck” or find yourself procrastinating, ask yourself “what is going on here?” what am I feeling and how might that contribute to my procrastinating? Let yourself know what you really want (your will) and look at those tasks ahead to get it. This will allow you to stumble and think about the mere basics iof the task ahead.
The next step is to plan for that amount of time needed to complete the task. Where will the time come from? You can’t easily to do two things at once and you have an absolute amount of time between now and when your project is to be finished. Where will the time come? Then when you see what time you have and understand how long the task may take look at the approach you have taken and the key areas your dealing with. Understand that each key aspect in your approach is a step in the ladder.
Now what you need to do is get out there and just do it. Dont try and be perfect, you have a whole life for that. What you will find is that the jump will not be so big if the thing your trying to get or do isnt perfect. You will just have to realise that it may be not this time you get your perfection.
Overcoming procrastination isn’t an all or nothing thing. No one overcomes their procrastination with only one time of doing things differently. It takes repeated efforts, sometimes two steps forward one step backward but if you know where you are headed it makes it easier when you do get discouraged.