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Procrastination is an act that most of us do repeatedly, regardless of our activity, planning, and even the strength of our will. It is the act that ultimately causes us to postpone many tasks until the last moments, and to complete them in a less good and perfect manner than we could have done if we started from the beginning.
Given the widespread phenomenon of procrastination and its impact on our productivity and daily life, in this article we will give you a lot of information about it, whether with regard to its definition, causes, or most importantly, of course, ways to get rid of it effectively.
Procrastination is simply avoiding doing priority tasks, and doing other tasks that are not at all useful or even less important at the moment, and this happens despite being fully aware of the necessity of the first task.
Procrastination is not considered a modern phenomenon, but in fact it is an act that has been rooted in human behavior since ancient times, and its meanings are found in the books of the Greeks and many other ancient civilizations.
And procrastinating, contrary to what appears, does not make us feel comfortable that we are doing an easy and more enjoyable task. Rather, quite the opposite, as it puts us in a state of guilt, remorse, and fear of the task that we are avoiding doing in a way that cannot be ignored.
If you cannot overcome and treat it, procrastination in the long term will affect the functioning of your daily life, whether at work or study, and put you in a very bad state of depression and self-loathing.
We procrastinate due to a number of different reasons, the most prominent of which are:
1. Excessive perfectionism: Sometimes we try to do things so perfectly that we get caught up in trivial side things and miss the main task, such as overly meticulous planning, having very specific tools, or even waiting a certain time to start and unnecessarily over-organizing the space where you are going to work.
2. Being deceived by the difficulty of the task: We give many tasks more than their size, especially if we have not done them before, and that is what makes us think that they are more difficult than they actually are, and as a result we try to postpone them as much as possible, but when we start them we realize that they are not at all like we imagined.
3. Distractions are more enjoyable: This is probably the biggest trigger for procrastination. With so many distractions available at the push of a button everywhere, it’s very difficult to start and focus on any less enjoyable task, which is why our concentration time is currently declining.
4. Ambiguity of the mission: Not knowing many details about exactly what you are going to do can create an aura of fear around doing it, which will definitely make you procrastinate and avoid doing it for a long time, so be aware of that and push yourself to get started.
5. Lack of motivation: Many tasks are not tied to a specific date, such as going to work or school, and it is difficult to push yourself to do them continuously, and often you postpone them for a time when you cannot postpone them, such as postponing studying until the nights of exams and many other examples.
6. Wait until the last minute: Many people think that no matter how late they are in completing the task required of them, they will be able to do it in the last moments without any problem, which leads them to procrastinate and do it in the last moments, which results in not getting the best results or not even doing it completely.
After learning what procrastination is Procrastination And its causes; Here are 13 effective ways to overcome it as quickly as possible:
The fewer decisions you make during the day, the less you will procrastinate, as these decisions drain your energy greatly, and your making of these decisions may be affected by your mood that day, which can make you assess the situation incorrectly.
The solution here is to make a plan for what you will do for this day, whether on a weekly or daily basis, but even if it is on a daily basis, you must still make it the day before.
It is possible to specify more details as well, such as the clothes you will wear, what you will eat, and other decisions that consume you mentally during the day.
No matter how easy and simple the tasks you planned to do are, you will soon find yourself thinking about doing something else that is more enjoyable or even something that could be useful but is not necessary.
What you should do when these thoughts come to you is not to accept any alternative to what you are doing other than not doing anything at all. For example, when you have to study and your mind tells you to arrange your room, for example.
Tell yourself that if you don’t study, you won’t do anything else. You will just sit in silence until you finish that task, and soon you will find yourself doing it automatically.
The environment surrounding you has a significant impact on the decisions you make in general and certainly plays a role in generating procrastination. If you are an alcoholic, it does not make sense to put some alcohol around you and expect that you will not return to your addiction.
Therefore, you should start adjusting your work environment to help you resist procrastination, by making it as comfortable as possible by sitting in a quiet and organized place.
The most important thing is to get rid of any of the things that distract you, whether it is the phone, a friend, or anything else, and we will devote a separate point to dealing with those distractions below.
Read also: How to improve the work environment to achieve better productivity
Continuing to procrastinate for too long makes you somewhat disconnected from the tasks at hand, which makes it difficult to get back to them, but this problem can be easily solved.
All you have to do is start with the easiest thing you can do about that task to make working on it more attractive to your mind and isolate it from the preconceived idea it has, which will make you stop procrastinating significantly.
But there are some tasks whose parts do not differ in ease, and with which you will not be able to do this, and the solution here is to tell yourself that you will only focus on them for 25 minutes, for example, which will give you exactly the same feeling.
When it comes to work and productivity, goals are everything, as they are the main factor that determines your success or failure. On the other hand, they are also closely linked to procrastination.
Unrealistic goals can make you lazy to start, under the pretext that they are impossible to achieve, or even dissatisfied with your results, so you procrastinate when doing them later.
However, this rule applies only to measurable goals, such as studying a certain amount of academic material or exercising for a specific number of hours, but it does not apply to goals that you have no control over, such as obtaining a certain grade or reaching a certain weight.
One of the most common situations that causes you to procrastinate is when you do not complete a task and try to return to it again, as you think that you have forgotten what you have already done and that you will often have to do additional tasks as well.
Therefore, when you start doing any activity, try to finish it all, and if it is too big to finish in the short term, you can still divide it into smaller pieces related to each other and finish each of them separately.
If you search anywhere on the Internet for ways to eliminate procrastination, you will find that giving yourself rewards is an essential component of almost all of them. In order to eliminate an act like this, you need to build a habit.
The process of building habits goes through certain stages, the most prominent of which is doing the required activity, and then rewarding yourself so that the brain connects the two actions and encourages you to do it in the future, but of course you must make the reward compatible with what you produced and not exaggerate it.
Read also: Summary of the Learn How to Learn course
When you are tied to a specific appointment, you automatically find yourself trying to finish before this deadline in order to avoid the consequences of delay, or even so as not to let down the party that is waiting for you, whatever you do. Since most tasks do not have a supervisor like this, you will try in this step to create one yourself.
Telling a close friend or family member to check your progress on doing something can have exactly the same effect. It is also possible to work in a group and constantly check each other’s progress, as I will explain in a separate point.
This is probably the most important point on the whole list, as there are a huge number of distractions around us that give us a lot of pleasure without any significant effort, and that certainly makes their presence while trying to concentrate very distracting.
The solution is simply to remove all these distractions from the work environment. Even if your mind does not want to start the task required of you, it will have no choice but to sit without doing anything or do it.
I didn’t buy that point very much when I first read it, but it turns out a lot of studies show that if you forgive yourself for past procrastination and time wasted without doing anything useful you can have a positive impact.
It is obvious that blaming yourself for what happened will not bring you any useful return and will not give you back the time you wasted, but thinking positive on the contrary will have a much better effect on you now and in the future as well.
Before you procrastinate, we all do the exact same steps to try to avoid doing the important thing. You will find your mind trying to distract you every time in almost the same ways without much difference, and that is what you can use to your advantage.
You can record what you do before you procrastinate, and when you find yourself intending to do it again in the future, be aware of that and stop immediately.
Things like glancing at the TV or phone, making a drink, or other activities often end up causing us to procrastinate for a long time.
Procrastination is often faced by those who work individually, such as students and those who work remotely, and not those who go to work in the morning to work collectively. These people mostly do not face the problem of procrastination in this environment.
Therefore, it is very useful for those who work alone to place themselves within a community that does the same activity as them, in order to push them to constantly advance and keep up with the rest of the members, even if it is online.
Although this step is very basic and plays a major role in ending procrastination, I mentioned it at the end so that you can apply it immediately after finishing the article, and the method of applying it is easier than almost all of the methods we mentioned.
Whatever task you are procrastinating and making excuses for, count to three and get up immediately without thinking of any excuse or any side task that will distract you from doing it, and you will find yourself immersed in that task faster than you can imagine.
Conclusion
None of us does not constantly face procrastination in our work or studies and find ourselves wasting a lot of time avoiding doing a task that we have to do, which ends up with us feeling a fatal feeling of remorse that cannot be ignored.
In order to avoid this process as much as possible, we discussed in this article all the causes of procrastination and ways to get rid of them so that you are able to confront them, whether in your mentality and behavior or even in your work environment.
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