Do you find yourself constantly putting off tasks with a nagging sense of guilt? You are not alone. Procrastination is a common challenge that many individuals face and hinders our productivity. But the question is how to stop procrastinating and get back on track.
The good news is that there are effective strategies to overcome procrastination and regain control of your time and productivity.
In this article, we will explore 8 highly effective ways to stop procrastinating and start taking decisive action. By implementing these strategies, you can break free from the cycle of delay and boost your productivity.
Let’s dive in and discover how to conquer procrastination once and for all.
What Does Procrastinate Mean?
To procrastinate means to delay or postpone tasks or actions that should be completed on time. It involves intentionally putting off important or necessary activities and opting for more immediate or pleasurable tasks instead.
Procrastination is often characterized by a lack of timely action despite the awareness of the negative consequences or the importance of the tasks at hand.
When someone procrastinates, they typically engage in activities that provide immediate gratification or distractions, such as browsing social media, watching videos, or engaging in leisure activities, instead of focusing on the tasks that require attention.
Procrastination is a common human tendency, and many individuals experience it to some degree in different aspects of their lives. However, chronic or excessive procrastination can become a habitual and detrimental pattern, negatively affecting various areas, including work, academics, and life as a whole.
Causes of Procrastination
The causes of procrastination are of two types: Common Causes and Psychological Causes. By understanding the underlying causes and implementing strategies we can easily overcome procrastination.
Let’s have a brief understanding of these causes.
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Common Causes
Procrastination can stem from various underlying causes, and understanding these causes is crucial for effectively addressing and overcoming the behavior. Let’s explore the main causes of procrastination in detail:
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Lack of Clarity and Direction
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When individuals lack clear goals or a sense of purpose, it becomes challenging to prioritize and take action. Procrastination can occur when individuals feel overwhelmed or uncertain about where to start or what steps to take. Without a clear direction, it is easier to delay tasks.
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Lack of Motivation
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Insufficient motivation or a lack of intrinsic interest in a task can make it difficult to initiate action. When individuals do not feel excited or inspired by a task, they may struggle to find the motivation to start. This lack of motivation can lead to procrastination as they prioritize more immediately rewarding or enjoyable activities instead.
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Poor Time Management
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Ineffective time management skills can contribute to procrastination. Individuals may struggle to allocate time properly, underestimate the time required for tasks, or fail to create a realistic schedule. This leads to delays and procrastination, as they find themselves overwhelmed or unable to meet deadlines.
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Distractions and Temptations
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Distractions in the form of social media, entertainment, or other engaging activities can divert attention and contribute to procrastination. The immediate gratification derived from these distractions can outweigh the long-term benefits of completing important tasks. Procrastinators may find themselves succumbing to these distractions instead of focusing on their responsibilities.
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Task Aversion
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Some tasks may be inherently unpleasant, boring, or challenging, leading individuals to procrastinate. The discomfort associated with these tasks can make them unappealing, causing individuals to delay working on them in favor of more enjoyable or easier activities.
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Overwhelm and Task Complexity
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Facing overwhelming or complex tasks can be intimidating and lead to procrastination. When a task feels too big or too complicated, individuals may feel paralyzed and unsure of where to begin. Procrastination becomes a response to the perceived magnitude or complexity of the task.
By addressing these underlying causes, individuals can work towards overcoming procrastination. We will discuss the strategies later in the article that can help you combat procrastination and enhance productivity.
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Psychological Causes
Procrastination has several psychological causes that can contribute to the behavior. These psychological factors can vary from person to person.
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Fear of Failure
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The fear of failure is a common psychological cause of procrastination. Individuals may be afraid of not meeting their own or others’ expectations, being judged or criticized, or facing the consequences of potential mistakes. This fear can lead to avoidance and delay in starting or completing tasks.
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Perfectionism
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Perfectionism is a personality trait characterized by setting extremely high standards and striving for flawlessness. While striving for excellence can be positive, perfectionists often have an intense fear of making mistakes or falling short of their expectations. This fear can lead to procrastination as they delay tasks in an attempt to achieve perfection or because they feel they are not yet fully prepared.
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Low Self-Confidence
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Procrastination can be a result of low self-confidence or self-doubt. When individuals lack confidence in their abilities to complete a task, they may hesitate to start or avoid it altogether. Procrastination becomes a way to protect themselves from potential failure or negative evaluations.
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Lack of Intrinsic Motivation
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Intrinsic motivation refers to engaging in activities for the inherent enjoyment and satisfaction they provide. When tasks lack personal meaning or intrinsic interest, individuals may struggle to find the motivation to initiate action. This can lead to procrastination as they prioritize more immediately rewarding or enjoyable activities instead.
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Poor Emotional Regulation
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Procrastination can also be linked to difficulties in managing emotions. Unpleasant or negative emotions, such as anxiety, boredom, or frustration, can arise when facing challenging or tedious tasks. Procrastination becomes a coping mechanism to avoid or alleviate these uncomfortable emotions in the short term.
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Avoidance Coping
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Procrastination can serve as a form of avoidance coping, where individuals use delay as a way to avoid confronting or dealing with difficult or unpleasant tasks. By putting off the task, they temporarily escape the discomfort associated with it.
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Time Perception Bias
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Individuals may have an inaccurate perception of time, often underestimating the time required to complete a task. This time perception bias can lead to procrastination as they believe they have more time available than they do, resulting in delays and rushing to meet deadlines.
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Depression
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Depression often leads to feelings of low energy, lack of motivation, and difficulty concentrating. These symptoms can make it challenging to initiate tasks and maintain productivity, resulting in procrastination. The sense of hopelessness and apathy associated with depression can further contribute to the delay in taking action.
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Anxiety Disorders
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Anxiety disorders, such as generalized anxiety disorder or social anxiety disorder, can cause excessive worry, fear, and stress. These overwhelming emotions can interfere with task initiation and completion, leading to procrastination as individuals may avoid situations or tasks that trigger their anxiety.
Understanding these psychological causes can help individuals address the root of their procrastination tendencies.
How Procrastination Can Ruin Your Life?
Procrastination may seem like a harmless habit, but if left unchecked, it can have significant negative impacts on various aspects of your life.
Here are several ways in which procrastination can potentially ruin your life:
Missed Opportunities
Procrastination often leads to missed opportunities for personal and professional growth. When you consistently delay taking action, you may miss out on important chances to advance your career, pursue new relationships, or engage in fulfilling experiences. Procrastination can hinder your ability to seize opportunities as they arise, limiting your overall potential.
Decline in Productivity
Procrastination is a productivity killer. When you consistently postpone tasks, you experience a decline in productivity and efficiency. Your work quality may suffer as you rush to complete assignments, leading to errors and subpar outcomes. This can negatively impact your performance at work or in academic settings, damaging your reputation and limiting your progress.
Increased Stress and Anxiety
Procrastination can contribute to heightened stress and anxiety levels. Constantly putting off tasks leads to a build-up of unfinished work and impending deadlines, creating a constant source of stress. The weight of unfinished responsibilities can take a toll on your mental well-being, leading to increased anxiety, guilt, and a sense of being overwhelmed.
Damaged Relationships
Procrastination can strain relationships, both personal and professional. When you repeatedly fail to fulfill commitments or follow through on promises due to procrastination, it erodes trust and reliability. Loved ones, colleagues, and friends may become frustrated or disappointed, leading to strained connections and potential long-term damage to important relationships.
Health Consequences
Chronic procrastination can have negative health consequences. The stress and anxiety resulting from constantly being behind on tasks can impact your physical and mental well-being. Procrastination can disrupt sleep patterns, contribute to unhealthy coping mechanisms such as overeating or substance abuse, and increase the risk of developing mental health issues like depression or burnout.
Regret and Self-Doubt
Procrastination often leads to feelings of regret and self-doubt. When you repeatedly postpone tasks, you may experience a sense of wasted time and missed opportunities. This can lead to feelings of dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, and a belief that you’re not living up to your potential. Over time, chronic procrastination can undermine your self-confidence and hinder personal growth.
Financial Consequences
Procrastination can have financial implications as well. Putting off important financial tasks, such as paying bills, managing budgets, or making strategic investments, can lead to late fees, missed opportunities for financial growth, or even financial crises. Failure to address financial responsibilities on time can result in significant long-term consequences.
It’s important to recognize the potential detrimental effects of procrastination and take proactive steps to overcome it.
How To Stop Procrastinating?
Here are 8 highly effective strategies that can help you overcome procrastination and increase your productivity.
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Know Thy Enemy – Resistance
So the first question we need to address is knowing who is our enemy. In the case of procrastination, it is resistance.
Most of us have two lives, the life we live, and the unlived life within us, and between the two is this thing called resistance and that is the secret to overcoming procrastination.
Resistance is the negative force that’s actively working against us to stop us from doing
the things we want to do. It doesn’t stop us from watching Netflix or from playing video games. Instead, it stops us from doing anything that we know in our hearts is gonna level up our lives.
It is the force that is holding us back from doing creative or entrepreneurial things or things that require any level of risk-taking or putting ourselves out there. It’s a constant battle.
You might have heard this a million times people saying:
“I wanna start a YouTube channel at some point.”
“I’m gonna start a podcast, but you know the timing’s not quite right.”
“Why would anyone care what I have to say?”
This is all resistance, it’s all that procrastination that’s building within us. But what fuels resistance is fear.
Resistance is activated by fear and gains strength whenever we give in to that fear creating a cycle that we fall into and which leads to resistance becoming even stronger as our fear becomes even greater.
Fear is a very good thing because when we feel scared about doing something, it usually means we should just do the thing.
You will never feel any resistance towards sitting down and playing games but will feel resistance towards sitting down to write a book. So, the more you feel scared about doing something, you must try to do that.
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Act Like A Professional
Let’s understand the difference between a professional and an amateur.
An amateur takes action whenever inspiration strikes or when they’re in the right mood. They’re not committed, and their goals are focused on fun, money, and status.
Whereas a professional shapes their life so that work is a priority, they are determined and committed to succeed by following their inner drive and creative spirit.
The only way we can deal with resistance is by becoming professional with our work rather than amateur.
A professional is someone who does it for the sake of doing the work and takes pride in the work itself. And there’re other traits that professionals have when it comes to doing their job.
They show up every day to your job no matter what and wouldn’t just go to work because they don’t feel like it. They work through adversity and are open to criticism because they always wanna improve.
Whereas an amateur will feel bad If they drew something or made a video and someone gives bad feedback or they get a bad comment, then they are upset. It hurts their feelings and it ruins their life.
On the other hand, a professional will be more inclined to grow from the feedback. A professional understands that fear is just part of the work.
Like if you’re a doctor and that’s your profession, you know that you’re gonna be stepping outside your comfort zone.
Whereas if you approach things with an amateur perspective, like starting a YouTube
channel or whatever, as soon as the going gets tough, then you’re gonna fold like a cheap suit.
But if we are professional with our work, we recognize that facing resistance is a daily battle. You have to do it. It’s part of the job.
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Diminish Your Ego
Once we’ve become a professional, the next thing we need to do is recognize the ongoing battle between the self and the ego.
Our ego is more focused on external events and how other people see us, whereas the self is this inner calm that we have which is about the way that we see ourselves.
When we’re led by our ego, our main priority is to maintain our status in the eye of the world,
and we’re just focused on how external events affect us. Everything is very superficial and surface-level.
Then we’ve got the self, which is made up of the individual and collective unconscious
areas of our minds, which include our dreams, intuition, visions, and aspirations. It encompasses the deepest form of who we are.
It’s like the growth mindset and fixed mindset. When we have a fixed mindset, and we get negative feedback or something, or we do something that we know is not very good, it shakes us to the core because it damages our ego.
Whereas when we have a growth mindset about something, we recognize that if we fail at something, it’s just part of the process of improving over time.
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Define Input Based Goals
We get a lot more procrastination when we’ve got goals that are based on outcomes that are outside of our control.
So for example, if you are making YouTube videos, which is an easy example. One way of thinking about my goals for YouTube is to want this video to get this many views or hit this many subscribers by the end of the year.
That’s an outcome-based goal. It’s very outside of our control. The only thing in our control is making the videos.
But if your goal is that you want this video to be really good then that’s when perfectionism takes hold, that’s when you feel the resistance, and that’s when you procrastinate.
You must always define input goals that are entirely in your control.
For example, making two videos a week consistently is an input goal, it’s something that’s broadly within our control.
Any time you think of that outcome goal, you will feel procrastination, resistance, and pain. But when you think of input-based goals, you will do the thing rather than procrastinate.
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Accomplish Your Day Before It Starts
Next is to finish your day before it starts. How is that possible?
Let me explain.
When you plan all the important tasks of the upcoming day the previous evening or night, you finish your day before it starts.
Visualize your day. See what needs to be done. Whenever you want to progress the day these little voids in your head will remind you that all of that needs to be done.
And you won’t be able to progress with it in peace till you get things done.
This is one of the most effective techniques to deal with procrastination.
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Build That Wall (Environment and Digital Distractions)
Screen Distraction is a very big cause of restoration nowadays. Ask yourself how many times you will turn to check your phone when you are doing something important.
We often see people looking at their phones every 5 minutes for some new notification or something else which comes on that screen.
The phone is just an example but being distracted from the work that you need to do. The things that are fun or things that are not important break your concentration from the things you need to do which is one of the biggest reasons for procrastination.
If you want to tackle your procrastination effectively keep all those things that are distractions, away from you.
Keep your phone away if you are studying just have your books. If you are working just focus on your work. If you don’t eliminate distractions, your distractions soon will eliminate you.
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Start Small
How do you eat an elephant?
It looks too big. Right?
The answer is simple, you eat one bite at a time.
Take a big task and break it down. Slot the same time every week or every day for the same kind of tasks keep the morning for the most difficult task.
Brian Tracy says that “If you finish doing the hardest task first thing in the morning, the joy of being productive motivates you throughout the day.”
This means setting the goal to something less than what you were capable of. Let’s understand it with an example.
Say, you want to practice meditation every day. You set out to meditate for 20 minutes every
day. For a chattery mind, 20 minutes seems big and so you do it only a couple of times per week.
It makes you feel that you don’t have the time to sit down and do 20 minutes of meditation.
Now lower the expectations by aiming to meditate for just two minutes every day. By lowering the bar, you will find that you will start meditating as the time is just two minutes. You will be able to meditate on most days of the week.
Slowly and gradually you will see that even though you have set the goal as just two minutes, you are always exceeding it.
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Make A Reward System
This means that we tend to avoid tasks that we find difficult to do or those tasks that we don’t like to do.
If you want to have some self-motivation to do something then the best way is to reward yourself generously.
Whenever you have to get an important project done, promise to treat yourself to something you have wanted for a long time.
This promise for a reward will act as reinforcement to go through a task that is difficult for you.
The thought of reward works as fuel and helps you complete the task in time without procrastinating
From all the above things, not all need to work for you. Choose the ones that best suit you.
Conclusion
Ultimately, conquering procrastination is a journey that requires self-awareness, discipline, and consistent effort.
Mastering the art of overcoming procrastination is crucial for personal and professional growth. By implementing the highly effective techniques discussed above, individuals can regain control over their time and productivity.
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