Highly Effective Ways To Overcome Procrastination

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Procrastination 

Occasionally waiting until the last minute to complete tasks happens to many people.However, when it is recurring and occurs frequently, it may be procrastination, which can deeply affect work, relationships, health and all aspects of life. Procrastination can affect relationships when delaying decisions and commitments, and avoid taking relationships further. It will also affect work and school, as well as stop you from reaching goals in life.

Why do we procrastinate?

Procrastination is commonly associated with laziness, but this is usually not the case and it is actually more complex than that. There are many drivers of procrastination, including low self-confidence, anxiety, emotional regulation, rumination and negative thoughts, perfectionism, fear of failure, and many more. Other contributing factors may include not enjoying the task at hand, being unorganized, unmotivated, overwhelmed, poor time management skills, and feeling bad about procrastination or past mistakes which becomes part of the loop and leads to further procrastination. Another example is that those with perfectionist traits may procrastinate due to fear of failure, as delaying the task will delay this.

How to overcome procrastination

• Understand your reasons behind procrastination - are you just overwhelmed or unmotivated? Or are you procrastinating due to fear of failure?
• Emotional regulation, recognizing our emotions and feelings, and dealing with negative emotions, false beliefs
• Self-compassion and self-forgiveness, to grow from past mistakes, and to forgive yourself when you don’t meet your own expectations
• Reward yourself for little achievements
• Having friends or family hold you accountable for your goals
• Reassess priorities and the reasons you need to do this particular task
• Finding help for Perfectionism, which can help you overcome fear of failure (leading to procrastination!)
• Stop catastrophizing about the difficulties and stress of tasks
• Break down overwhelming tasks into subtasks
• Create To-Do lists
• Think about the benefits of completing the task, and weigh them against the consequences of not completing it
• Avoid distractions (for example social media, television)
• Set SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound)
• Go to Therapy

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Try these 14 tips today and you will definitely notice the difference in your efficiency!