Procrastination. What is it?
Procrastination is basically when a person decides to leave a task in order to do it later in time. It is normal for people to procrastinate once in a while - when you can't avoid it. However, it will prove to create problems for you if you start to procrastinate quite too many times, especially when it was completely unnecessary for you to do so.
Why do we procrastinate?
These are 5 reasons I found to why some people procrastinate. Mostly related to school lives.
1. Fear of failure
Some people, including me, choose to procrastinate because of fear towards failure. We're too afraid of one day finding out that our effort of producing a piece of work would prove to be worthless. But then, if we never tried, how would we know whether our effort has paid off or not, right? Exactly! This fear, that keeps on lingering in our minds, is not going to make anything better, it could if we used it as a cautious way of managing work. However, it can usually make us work even less and this is where procrastination comes in. We leave our work till the last minute and rush things, ignoring details and the important bits that would add those extra marks we would've potentially get in our work.
Be wise, be brave. Remember that failure is part of life, we need to embrace it, learn it!
2. Perfectionism
Perfectionism. A really good attitude for work which requires neat and detailed attention. However, when people try to be 'too perfect', they tend to spend too much time on a particular task that they leave other tasks 'untouched'. This unbalances the amount of work done. For example, if a student focuses too much on arts and forget about other subjects such as maths and science, they will find themselves struggling for maths and science in the near future.
Remember - life is full of imperfection. Sure, you can give your best to achieve the possible best. But, not everything has to be perfect to produce the best. Sometimes, imperfection is better than perfection.
3. Confusion and self-doubt
Often people are not stuck with the task given, rather, they're stuck with how to start the task. For example, writing a story for English. They know what the plot of the story is, they just don't know how to start it. Sometimes, they think their words are not right and just not good enough. This then puts them off the task and the word 'give up' would emerge in their selves.
Have confidence. Think of the different ways you can start a task and choose which one you think is best. Don't spend too much time on how to start that you spend less time on the main content.
4. Poor motivation
In everything we do, motivation is one of the most important factor that can affect your quality and rate of work. If you're motivated, there's technically no point in doing something. It's like being a salesperson. If you go around people's houses, with no enthusiasm in selling, you're practically telling your customers that your product is crap and not worth their time and money. But, if you go up to them, with a big smile on your face, with confidence and motivation, you're showing that you're confident they'll like your product and it will be worth their time and money. It's the same concept with motivation - when you have poor or low motivation, you'll give in less effort and produce less quality work. Instead, if you have a high motivation, you'll want to work more and will want to produce the best result that you can possibly do.
No matter how tired you are, think of the benefit of doing the work, either it'd be to get straight A*s or to impress your mum. Your effort will always pay off.
5. Lack of priorities
People, especially students often have little sense of priorities. They cannot decide over which tasks are more important. Some choose to start off with the hard tasks first and then focus on the easier tasks. Personally, I would recommend to start off with the easy bits first as you will be more happy with your progress and will more likely to carry on with the work. From how I see it, people can usually get put off by the hard tasks that they give up completely on doing other similarly important tasks and work.
Make a list of what needs to be done, decide which ones more important. If you can't decide, just organize your time so that all of the works that needs to be done will be given a reasonable time, for you to focus on each one.
If you'd like a more in-depth view into procrastination and how to overcome it. I think these books might just be the next best thing (after this entry ;) )
Note: I have posted this article previously before here.
