Suffering from Procrastination?

Procrastination is one of the most interesting topics I have ever experienced with my audience during various training programs conducted on the subject of time management.

 If you’ve found yourself putting off important tasks over and over again, you’re not alone. In fact, many people procrastinate to some degree, but some are so much affected by procrastination that it prevents them fulfilling their potential, brings down their efficiency and disrupts their progression in life. The key to controlling this obstinate habit is to identify when you start procrastinating, understand why it happens, and take corrective steps to manage your time and outcomes better.

Procrastination is a major challenge to our system, results in significant drop in work efficiency and desired output. Under-managed organisations, government offices and the businesses where customers are not demanding are mainly suffering from this problem, however, in some or other form it is affecting the work performance everywhere.

What is procrastination?

If I go with the dictionary meaning of procrastination -`It is the action of delaying or postponing something`. In Hindi, it can be very well called as ` Talna`. In a nutshell, you procrastinate when you put off things that you should be focusing on right now, usually in favor of doing something that is more enjoyable or that you’re more comfortable doing.

Why do you procrastinate?

When it was asked to different groups of people that why do they procrastinate, there was an absolute similarity found in their answers, irrespective of the diversity of the groups. The reasons stated were the combination of following:

• Not having a clarity of work, Do not know where to start ?,Lack of knowledge, Laziness, Lack of ownership, Fear of failure
• Lack of control/ monitoring (Expect someone to supervise ), Non recognition, Overconfidence, Dependency on others, Work overload, Boring work
• Time constraints, Perfectionism, Distractions

These reasons can be divided in two groups, group one is related to lack of skills and group two is related to behavior (habit) of individuals.

Interestingly we suffer from the habit of procrastination right from our childhood. We see others doing it and gradually we inculcate it in us, unconsciously.

As most of the reasons for procrastination are behavioral or habitual, an individual can eliminate them with conscious efforts. Even the reasons due to lack of skills can also be addressed through appropriate behaviors.

Procrastination is a habit – a deeply ingrained pattern of behavior. That means that you won’t just break it overnight. Habits only stop being habits when you have persistently stopped practicing them, so use as many approaches as possible to maximize your chances of beating them. Some tips will work better for some people than for others, and for some tasks than others. And, sometimes, you may simply need to try a fresh approach to beat the habit of procrastination.

Am I suffering from it ?

Recognizing and accepting honestly that you are procrastinating is the key to combat this menace of habit. In case if you are not sure that you are suffering from this bad habit, you may like to try some of the following tests to know:

• You tend to complete the low priority work more than high priority.
• Doing same thing again and again, like reading e-mails several times without starting work on them.
• Wait for a right time to come to complete certain work.
• You tend to find a reason to postpone your work

Most of the participants in my training programs have agreed that they will need a strategy against each of the habit to get rid of it. However, the preventive action plans were found common in most of the cases and are summarized here which can be used to deal with and control procrastination.

 Anti-Procrastination Strategies

• Complete unpleasant tasks first, early in the day.
• Break large jobs into smaller pieces.
• Determine a time to make a decision and share the deadline with others.
• Do SOMETHING—no matter how small.
• Reward yourself for accomplishments

So, recognize that you are procrastinating, identify the reason against each habit, develop your own strategy to deal with it and get rid of this menace. Remember, if you are an aspiring guy, have stars in your eyes, then YOU MUST DEAL WITH THE HABIT OF PROCRASTINATION QUICKLY.