Last year, around November – December, most of us had things planned out, things we wanted to do, things we wanted to accomplish, goals and ambitions we wanted to embark on, and we had intentions of starting within the first week of January, in the coming year, “New year, new me” is the motto “New year's resolution” is what we call it.
First week of January came in, and most of us that had things planned out thought “You know what?, it's the first week of January, it's still within the holiday period, I don’t have to do this now, I don’t have to start now, there’s still time, it's just the FIRST WEEK of the FIRST MONTH of a NEW YEAR, it's okay to chill for a minute” the first week goes by, now, it's the second week of January and we think “You know what, I prefer to start by the first week of the Month, so I’ll just push this to February so that I can start afresh, NEW MONTH, NEW START, NEW ME” February comes in and then “something” comes up and that’s how we push our goals, dreams and ambitions, causing us to never accomplish them.
That’s what procrastination is, delaying, pushing and postponing something and never doing it, or doing it when its extensively late, even when there’s a negative consequence for not doing it on time.
Are you a procrastinator?
Are you a procrastinator, how often do you delay things, how often do you push and postpone tasks to a later time constantly? Now I’m not exactly saying once you do this, you’re a procrastinator, but these are some signs. I’ll give you a few reasons why you do IF you do and how to overcome procrastination.
Why do you procrastinate?
- Decision Paralysis: Sometimes you procrastinate because of decision paralysis (also choice paralysis), this is when you have so many things to do within a given period, but don’t know where to start from or what to start from. This situation can make the simplest and easiest tasks overwhelming and can make the entire day seem chaotic, dreadful and stressing. A simple and easy method I use in overcoming this problem is creating a task list (to do list) for things I’d like to do the following day. This makes it easy for me since I know the things I want to do and have broken them down.
- Value of Time: Most of us don’t value time, and time is the most expensive thing in the universe, even more expensive than air (Oxygen), because you can literally walk into a hospital and buy air, but can’t do the same for time, once it's gone, its gone. When you start to realize that we have 1440 minutes in a day, and about 180 minutes out of that is gone in what I call the “waking hour initiation” this is when you wake up, brush your teeth, take a bath, exercise, eat breakfast etc. This takes about 180 minutes, once you remove 180 from 1440, you’ll notice that you have 1260 minutes left. You basically start off your day somewhere around 08:00/09:00 AM and end it around 04:00/05:00 PM that’s around 540 minutes, remove that from 1260 you’re left with 720 minutes. Once you start breaking it down like this, you’ll realize how much little time you have to engage in things that don’t benefit you like social media etc, this will help you in becoming more cautions of time and in valuing it.
- Lack of Discipline: With the advent of smart phone and social media, statistics have shown that excessive use social media can affect a person negatively, among other are a person’s discipline and attention span. With constant notification and buzzes, it can be quite difficult to focus on what you’re doing and finishing it. Some people think even without discipline, as long as you have MOTIVATION and PASSION everything will just flow, this isn’t entirely true, having a good discipline can give you the strength and drive you need, to do what you need to do. Not everything relies on motivation and or passion.
- No End Goal: Having an end goal in mind helps in keeping you more energized and more focused. Understand that for every task, there’s a reason you set out to do it and there’s an end goal to it, writing the goal next to a task helps you remember WHY you want to do it in the first place, and how that task is part of a bigger picture.
- No Encouragement: This might seem odd, but sometimes all you might need is some words of encouragement or a support group to push you forward. There are a lot of communities and groups out there you can join to share your goals, ambitions and have people support you through your journey.
- No Accountability (Partner): Sometimes when we’re unable to accomplish something or do a certain task, we tend to blame something, or someone, for not being able to do it, doing this makes it easy for us to continue delaying and pushing things to a later time. Having accountability allow us to take the blame, this can create a different perspective that allows us see our laziness and negligence towards achieving or goals and doing something about it. Having an accountability partner(s) also helps a lot. An accountability partner is someone who you share your goals & ambitions with, so that they would support and keep you committed to a desired goal. Having an accountability partner helps a lot because you know at some point (end of day, week month etc) you’ll ‘report’ to someone (accountability partner) and tell them what you’ve done from the tasks you set out, this makes it a bit difficult to keep on procrastinating and helps you become more inclined to finish your tasks.
- No Drive and Motivation: Lack of drive and motivation can sometimes lead to procrastination, not having the energy or willingness to do something can lead to huge lackadaisical attitude towards achieving set goal. Visualizing yourself accomplishing your goals or finishing your tasks can help in providing you with the energy and willingness you need.
Why fight procrastination?
- Missing out on Your Dreams and Goals: What do you want to be today or tomorrow? A coach, Entrepreneur, Boxer, full time Freelancer, Public Speaker, Graphic Designer, Programmer/Developer, Writer, Engineer, Plumber, Teacher, Carpenter, Doctor, Content Creator, Fashion Designer or whatever it may be, know that one of the things stopping you from achieving your goals is procrastination. We often talk about the possibilities of going back in time to change certain things, to tell ourselves something important, to give ourselves advise about our career, life or something. But we hardly think about traveling into the future to see how far we’ve gone, keep in mind that whatever it is you want to become in the future, you have to start working on it today. Imagine going to the future 2 weeks from now and seeing that you’ve finished working on that project, and it brought you some gigs, Imagine traveling 4 weeks into the future and seeing that you’ve finished that course, and it opened tons of possibilities and opportunities for you, now imagine traveling 2 years into the future, what are some expectations you’ll have for yourself? now imagine if 2 years from now you haven’t achieved much because you kept on procrastinating on EVERY SINGLE THING, that’s going to hit you hard.
- No Achievement: You might sometimes see everyone around you doing stuff and getting things done, you might wonder why you’re not, one of the things you’re probably overlooking is, you guessed it; procrastination.
You keep on procrastinating on finishing that course? no achievement.
You keep on procrastinating on starting that project? no achievement.
You keep on procrastinating on starting that business? no achievement.
You keep on procrastinating on putting together that portfolio? you’re going to remain broke.
- No Sense of Fulfilment: There’s a certain joy that comes with achieving your goal, apart from the actual achievement, there’s another sense of fulfilment that comes with that. For instance, you finished a course and earned a certificate, finishing the course and attaining the certificate in itself is an achievement, the joy and happiness felt after finishing the course and upon receiving the certification is a fulfilment. The more fulfilment you get, the more energy and willingness you’ll have to do more.
How to overcome procrastination.
- Learn to Have a Sense of Accountability: As mentioned earlier, having a sense of accountability helps you overcome procrastination because you have no one to blame but yourself.
- Learn to be organized: Being organized lets you see things as it is; clear and concise, not as you might see it; chaotic and stressing.
Create S.M.A.R.T Plans & Goals.
SMART plans & goals are used to establish criteria for effective goal setting. It helps you set a clearly defined objective.
S (Specific): Make sure your tasks & goals are specific and not generic, for instance if you want to do something regarding your freelancing, don’t write your task as ‘Work on freelance’ rather, write sometime like “Update clients on new rates.” This helps you specifically know what you need to do, so that even if you write it as something you’d like to do the coming Month, it won’t be confusing when you read it again after a while.
M (Measurable): Make the task measurable so that you’ll be able to track your progress, perhaps there’s that course you bought last year, and still haven’t finished it, a measurable task will be sometime like;
- Finish Procrastination course this Month -
Monday – Watch Introduction Video
Wednesday – Watch 2 videos.
A (Actionable/Achievable): Write your task in an achievable and actionable manner, in a way that’s within your control. Don’t write task that are impossible to accomplish, especially within a specific time frame. It's okay to be ambitious and to dream BIG, but things take time and consistency is extremely important. Write down actionable and achievable goals so that you would be able to accomplish them.
R (Realistic): Make your tasks and plans realistic, don’t put too much pressure on yourself and make them unrealistic. Creating unrealistic plans is only going to set you back, set you up for failure and make you beat yourself up for not accomplishing them. When you set realistic goals and plans, you’re also setting up realistic expectations.
T (Time bound): Provide yourself with a time bound and time span for each task, this will create a sense of urgency and also let you know how much time you can spend on each task. This also helps you know if you’re spending too much time on something and how long it takes for you to finish certain tasks.
Conclusion
There's no one way fits all when it comes to something like overcoming procrastination, some wouldn't even recommend using a task list (to do list), while some think it's the best way to overcome it. At best, you owe it to yourself to do a bit of research about how to overcome procrastination if this is something you struggle with and see which method(s) works for you.
