How can I stop procrastinating with things in my life?
3 Answers
Last Updated: 07/27/2020 at 7:59pm
Moderated by
Johanna Liasides, MSc, PhDc
Psychologist
I work with youth and young adults to help them improve depressive symptoms and self-esteem as well as effectively address family, relationship and peer conflicts.
Top Rated Answers
You can set a timer for a short amount of time, like five minutes, and do the task for that short amount of time. The task will likely seem a lot more approachable when you only have to do it for five minutes, and it will get you started, which is always the first step in the right direction. To-do lists with time amounts (I use post-it notes!) help too, and you can prioritize tasks that are harder, or have sooner due dates, or even if the task is hard and you work better in the morning, you can schedule to do it in the morning.
Sometimes it is hard to get going and easier to let things stay the way they are. Try to create a concrete plan of action, divided to small achievable parts.
Anonymous
November 19th, 2019 1:23am
Procrastination is a huge annoyance to deal with sometimes, fortunately its really easy to deal with once you identify your personal patterns and thought processes. A major cause for procrastination I find is actually stress. Delaying something you need to have gotten done even by a day causes stress (deadlines approaching, disappointment in wasting time, lack of physical activity etc) and how do you cope with this stress? You guess it, Procrastination. It's a vicious cycle. Another cause for procrastination is simply burn out, maybe you've been working a lot and you feel burned out and want to relax for a couple of days, this again leads to the vicious cycle of stress and stress relief.
Now for the good news! Once identified you can get on top of the issue. Firstly in my experience you need to give up on motivation, motivation can be good sometimes to get started on something but more often than not motivation takes the form of 'captive motivation' this means that you feel bursts of energy or motivation when you cannot act on it (in the train, in the shower, in bed falling asleep) this obviously precludes you from getting anything meaningful done and usually this motivation runs out shortly afterwards when you can actually act on it. The single best response to procrastination i've found is habit forming, if something is a habit you do it every day without thinking. To start with this try to establish a 'No Zero Day' Policy, this means that you do atleast 1 thing towards accomplishing your goals, For example if you're procrastinating an essay, maybe write out the title one day, a couple of words the other, If youre procrastinating on exercise maybe do a couple of pushups everyday. It only matters that you do *something*. Once you have established a habit of doing this everyday you will find that you'll try to do more of it with each passing day. It takes discipline to overcome procrastination and the best way to build discipline is through habit.
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