Ever so often, we find ourselves in a time crunch - rushing to meet a deadline, submit an assignment or even to complete an upcoming examination’s portion!
If you have ever put off an important task, say submitting an assignment to arrange your bookshelf alphabetically or reorganize your wardrobe so that it’s ‘color coordinated’, that classifies as procrastination. However, procrastination does not mean that you are lazy because, let’s be honest here, rearranging an entire bookshelf is not an easy task and requires both focus and effort.
So, if procrastination isn’t about laziness, then what is it about?
Contrary to popular belief, procrastination is not a time management problem; It goes much deeper than that.
The human brain is a beautiful yet dangerously complex place and much of what we do depends on thoughts, emotions and beliefs that stem from here.
When we procrastinate, we are aware that we are avoiding the task in question and we know that doing so is probably a bad idea. And yet, we do it anyway.
If we are faced with a particularly arduous or undesirable task, we are faced with a myriad of negative emotions - boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, self-doubt and beyond. These emotions dissuade us from actually focusing on the task at hand and diversion leads to procrastination.
It can be understood as the primacy of short-term mood repair, over the longer-term pursuit of intended actions.
While some of us are pushed to our peak under the pressure of the ticking clock, for most of us, procrastination further leads to higher levels of frustration, guilt, stress, and anxiety.
So, it’s ironic that we procrastinate to avoid negative feelings, but end up feeling even worse; though unfortunately, we can’t just tell ourselves to stop procrastinating. And since procrastination at its core is about emotions and not productivity, managing time ‘effectively’ is not a solution.
So, what can we do?
It’s okay if you just get started with that single tiny step, do it! Take breaks, use incentives, as ironic as it may seem, be positive, look for solutions internally that are, hopefully, more enticing than rearranging that bookshelf!
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