The State to Delay Things!

Procrastinators are great visionaries — they love to fantasize about the beautiful mansion they will one day have built — but what they need to be are gritty construction workers, who methodically lay one brick after the other, day after day, without giving up, until a house is built.

You must have delayed your task or your assigned work not once, not twice but many times. Basically, there is no human being who in some way or the other hasn't postponed the task or set of tasks. We all are aware of the word procrastination and it's meaning but, however, ever tried to find the reason behind or the solution to it?

Procrastination is so timeless, it's a never ending process. Once you are involved in delaying your tasks or set of tasks you increase the chances of procrastinating on a very frequent basis, which thus becomes an evil action resulting in pain and guilt.

"If you procrastinate when faced with a big difficult problem… break the problem into parts, and handle one part at a time.”_Robert Collier.

What happens when you procrastinate frequently?

Waste of precious time- Procrastination is a theif of time. "You may delay, but time will not", because lost time is never found again. The terrible feeling of guilt and regret is felt because we can't turn back the hands of time. Also, taking the first step at the right time so that the situation could have been better would have saved you from getting frustrated at yourself. “Time wasted is existence; used is life.”– Edward Young

Hard to meet goals- It becomes considerably hard for the procrastinators to meet their goals because they are more involved in delaying tasks or set of tasks to complete in future. We set goals because we have a desire to better our lives in some way and we destroy the possibility to better our lives because of procrastination.

Can ruin your career- Procrastination can end up in keeping you away from growing and learning. It prevents you from meeting the deadlines and to delay the work till the end date resulting in frustration, regret and pain. Moreover, it ruins your career and probably you can undermine your performance unnecessarily.

Builds work pressure and affect your health- Delaying a lot of things results till the end date results in building pressure in mind either to complete all the things or have to complete them at the same time. Mental pressure and stress created because of the undone work can result in quarrels with your mates or family and can cause emotional breakdown which affects your health badly.

Poor decision making- Your emotionally driven self as the time is running out can lead you to make poor decisions in order to accomplish the task. Emotions heavily influence the decisions we make which has terrible effects on our happiness and our life. Decision making is a complex process which requires lot of focus and analysis and making decision at last moment will never yield good results.

Lowered Self-esteem and Confidence- When you frequently procrastinate tasks even after seeing the results of it again and again, you start doubting yourself whether you probably can do it or not. Also, we procrastinate because of low self-esteem but make sure procrastination lowers it instead of reinforcing it. Low self-esteem lower downs your confidence to accomplish any task.

Will lose opportunities- We have missed the lot of opportunities, of which we could have taken advantage of to change our lives. Most of the opportunities only come around once and you are never guaranteed a second chance.

Can lose your dignity- Procrastinating frequently can make you fall behind your colleagues and can create an image of yours in the eyes of your boss that you are not worthy enough to handle the responsibilities of upcoming tasks. As a result you may feel lost and disturbed.

How to tackle the reasons behind procrastinating?

Have you ever sat down to complete an important task but suddenly reminded of various other tasks to be performed and the next thing you come to know that your important task remains unfinished.

Procrastination is a mysterious force that keeps us away from completing the most urgent and most important tasks.

Reasons for procrastinating can vary from person to person but here are some important reasons that leads you to procrastinate frequently:-

Fear of Failure- Our subconscious fear of failure that things may go wrong prevents you from accomplishing the task through procrastinating it, in order to avoid the negative feelings. Although you try to do your work but your subconscious fear of failure considerably makes you avoid or delay work. The stress of getting things 'just right' is so dominating that will cause you to delay things more frequently.

Fear of failure is not only the root cause for procrastination but also can sabotage your desire to move forward.

How to tackle it?

A procrastinator can overcome the fear of failure via analysing the need to change the perspective of outcome from completing the task. If a procrastinators try to visualise the results positively then they can see in themselves the motivation to achieve that recognition from their boss. Imagining the results in a positive way will lead him/her to strive for them and this is applicable in each and every situation when anyone who delay things feels that things can go wrong. I assure you that it will definitely work because our mind need a positive stimulus to continue with or complete the work.

Lack of Action- We don't take enough actions to execute the task on our to do list, this happens because there is no structure or goal setting involved once the idea has been created.

Lack of clarity of goals also results in lack of action because we don't have any idea how to process the things and what is the main reason behind doing that. To complete the tasks it's necessary to take actions and for the same setting up a goal or a structure to proceed with the things is absolutely incumbent and imperative.

How to tackle it?

Do we ever follow a schedule? I'll do a survey on following the schedule and most probably the chances of getting 'no' as the answers. As said - "The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action.”– Alexander Graham Bel

Let me tell you that following the schedule will bind you with the task to be completed within the specified time period and if the things don't go in the same manner can result in anxiety and frustration. Thus, it would be beneficial to make a short term goal or decide a work to be done on that day and try executing it throughout the day at your convenience. Particularly following a time bound schedule to carry out the lot of things and you will end up achieving nothing. Do this daily to keep yourself on track.

Prioritisation of inconsistent activities- To prioritise things it's extremely crucial to identify and list down the most important tasks to be performed at the first place and then follow up tasks. However, even after knowing the important task we focus more on the task which is irrelevant to avoid the anxieties of the important task awaiting for us. Moreover, our focus is on avoiding anxieties through some means for some guilty pleasure.

How to tackle it?

Make sure you ask yourself the value and purpose of each task and make a list. To prioritise things one has to differentiate on the basis 4 categories:-

Important and urgent

Important but not urgent

Not important but urgent

Not important and not urgent

Make a graph for a day mark the heading of each quadrant as mentioned above in a same order. List down the task in each and every quadrant to be performed. This will help you in knowing which task has to be executed first. In case of quadrant 1 and quadrant 3 the urgency of completing the task creates hustle in mind. Can anyone give their hundred percent in performing the task when their mind is already preoccupied?

"You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.

What mood is that?

Last-minute panic."

Make sure the task which is important but not urgent, this is where people thrive, grow and blossom.

Hope you definitely gonna take some steps to avoid procrastination, the state of delaying tasks and the above steps will help you to accomplish this task.

• By Khushi Gupta for Young Engine