6 Reasons You Procrastinate and 1 Strategy to Get Things Done

I do not know about you but I can be a terrible procrastinator at times. I have looked at my procrastination habits and tried to reason why I fall into this activity even when I know that it is not serving me well. I wish I could tell you that I have come up with some fail-safe quick fix so that you will never procrastinate again but unfortunately this is not the case.

I can however give you a 6 reasons people procrastinate and one strategy you could consider and put into action to get things done!  Hopefully they will have some value to you.

The first step is to want to beat procrastination and recognize when you are procrastinating. If you are doing any of the following when you have work to complete you are probably procrastinating.

·        Cheating on your to do list by rationalizing a lesser task when you should be spending your energy on a more important task.

·        Spending too much time getting ready to do a task and then when you sit down convince yourself that you need to go get yourself a refreshment to set yourself up, and then you’ll really get going.

·        Saying yes to any minor distraction and rationalizing that you are being useful even though deep down you know you should be working on the more important task.

·        Putting the important task off because there will be a better time later, like after lunch or some other reason.

Once you recognize that you are procrastinating, stop and think about what you are doing.

You know that you should be working on the important task but something is making you avoid doing that important work. See if you can identify the why and then look at dealing with that reason why.

6 common reasons why people procrastinate:

1.      The task is too big for you

2.     You do not know where to start

3.     You do not have everything you need

4.     You are not motivated or inspired to do it

5.     You have a fear of failure

6.     You have a fear of success that maybe you do not even recognize

See if you can identify which reason is yours for putting off that task.

Once you recognize that you are procrastinating and why, you have taken responsibility for your behavior you are now in a position to use your ability to respond to that behavior and turn things around as long as you have a big enough desire and a strong enough will.

Task is too big

The key is to recognize that the task is too big and then see what you can do about breaking the task into smaller pieces. Imagine you had a team of three qualified people who would do this task for you but they all had different skills and none had enough time to do it alone. How would you break down the task to assign it to this team?

Go through this exercise and write down the assignments that you would assign to each team member. Once you have done this you can now start on one of those three tasks, you see, you will have broken the task that seemed too big into smaller manageable tasks and now you only look at one smaller task at a time.

Don’t know where to start

If you do not know where to start then you can do a mind map on paper of all the smaller tasks necessary for completion, and study them for a while. Once you take on this puzzle you will soon see what is the logical order for these smaller tasks and then you can prioritize them into a list and start work on number one and then work your way through the rest. Do not concern yourself too much with the list being n the correct order. If it is not in the correct order you will soon discover that and then adjust as necessary. If you really feel you are not knowledgeable enough to do this then you probably need to seek some assistance from someone who is knowledgeable. Seeking assistance is taking a first action step.

Don’t have everything you need

If you put off the task because you do not have everything you need then you need to make a list of what you need get together first. If you prepare thoroughly enough you should be able to get started on the main task. If you find there are reasons such as budget or authority that are stopping you from getting all necessary materials then you will need to spend your energy on solving these issues first before getting overwhelmed with the larger task.

Not motivated or inspired

Sometimes when it comes to procrastination the reason can be that you are just not motivated or inspired enough to do it.

Ask yourself this; if your life or the life of the person you love the most depended on getting this task completed what would you do first and how would you feel about it.

You see sometimes we have a Negative Nelly in the back of our minds giving us some rational for not being motivated. Your task is to identify what this Negative Nelly is saying and then re-frame it. Years ago, I used to hate jogging and would jog like my legs were made of lead and my lungs were no bigger than an egg cup, but if I saw a pretty lady jogging towards me all of a sudden, I would pick up pace and increase my breathing and jog like I was made for it. Silly, isn’t it? I’m not particularly proud of that but I did realize that we always have so much more ability than we sometimes give ourselves credit for.

Use your imagination to re-frame that lack of motivation and give yourself some reason to get going now. Feel free to add a nice little reward to yourself once the task is done as well.

Fear of failure

If you have identified that you have a fear of failure then you need to get a clear picture of what is going to happen if you do not accomplish this task you are procrastinating on

If it is that you will have to go in front of your boss and get a talking to then imagine that as clear as you can and then shrink the picture in your mind until it is the size of a small dot and then vanishes completely. Do this repeatedly so that your mind totally erases the picture you have of being a failure.

Now imagine what would happen if you got the task done early and took it into your boss. See yourself getting the accolades from her and feel that warm glow of success and accomplishment. Repeat that image often and grow the picture so everything is bigger and brighter and more wonderful.

With that clear picture of success in your mind get started on the project. Should that negative image creep back in then tell it to leave and replace the picture in your head with the wonderful picture of success you painted for yourself. Practice this often it is really amazing how it works.

Fear of success

If you have a fear of success it is probably because you have an image of you not being worthy of completing this task and whatever it is that goes along with completing it.

Once again you can use the imaging exercise above and see yourself as being worthy of the success. Repeat the image you invent for yourself over and over again until that is the only image the brain has for that situation.

One of the challenges of our upbringing is that we make subconscious beliefs about ourselves that are based on things that have happened in our life. Our behavior is then based on those beliefs. I was once chased and bitten by a dog when I was six years old. I was always scared of dogs as long as I could remember growing up. The behavior of being scared was probably based on the belief that all dogs bite. I recently was visiting a friend who had taken in a small dog from the pound. Now it’s not that I was scared any more but I would’ve rather the dog not be there. This dog came up to me and lavished love on me and wouldn’t leave me alone. I have never felt so connected to most humans, never mind a dog. It was a wonderful feeling. My belief changed to not all dogs but, but only some do. With that change in belief my behavior to dogs is more friendly than fearful.

Work on identifying what your beliefs are about success and when you can identify beliefs that are not supporting your behaviors toward success re-write those beliefs. You will be surprised at how your behaviors change when your beliefs change.

Strategy to get things done

One of the best strategies I know for getting things done, is to write on paper the night before, everything you need to do tomorrow.

Then look at all you have written down and eliminate as many of the things you have written down as you can. Pretend you are a CEO looking at the list of a managers that has taken on too many tasks and strike out or delegate things with the least return on the time invested in them.

Now take the remainder of those tasks and assign a time slot to them by writing them into your calendar as appointments. They actually are appointments with yourself. Nowadays you can even set yourself reminders so there is no excuse.

The next day you get up and get stuck into following your scheduled day. Be sure to do this every evening and you will see that you start to become addicted to following your plan.