I have been planning to write something about procrastination for a while now. I always say to myself I will do it tomorrow then that turns into days, weeks and months. So today, I decided it’s about time I put pen to paper and reduce this ‘attitude of procrastination’. 

Many of us feel stuck and/or rotate around the things we plan to do each day without meeting our goals. We know what we intend to achieve in maybe 5, 10 or 15 years, yet we ponder and contemplate or do little to make those things a reality. 

Once I procrastinate, I neglect my responsibility. Procrastination is not only about putting off the things I know I ought to do; It happens when I waste my time on some small tasks that don’t help or play very little role in advancing my vision.

Procrastination revolves around two things – time and fear. It is a habit which we develop early in life and if not properly managed it might cause us to miss out on a lot of opportunities. So what are some of the causes of procrastination? 

‘Not having enough time’ and ‘there is still enough time’

More often than not we put away things we ought to do with the simple reason that we don’t have enough time. When I intend to carry out any task, I often say to myself ‘there’s enough time’ but at the end I will justify myself with ‘there wasn’t enough time’ because I got so many things to do.

When we dream, the fun begins. The new idea or opportunity is thrilling and we sit around enjoying it. Soon we relax with the idea and think it can be delayed and rely on our abilities to carry it at a later date. As time goes by, the fun dies down slowly and we become less interested as there is no need to put in more effort. Finally we give up when another ‘thrilling idea’ pops up. This happens with most of us.

Fantastic ideas are lost daily when we do not put up a plan of action, set a time frame or prioritise our activities.

Poor Time Management

Learning to manage our time is so vital in this day and age. Getting things done within a specific time frame will help fight the ‘attitude of procrastination’. We’ve got 24 hours each day at our disposal. How do you manage each second of the 86,400 seconds you are entitled to in a day? 

Let’s say we have a must-sleep eight hours in a day. We also have an average of 8 hours for work and still got about 8 hours left. How we manage those left-over hours is what made me to think time may not be the problem but how to manage our time effectively. 

When fear opens the door, procrastination installs itself comfortably

The fear of what happens when we fail or even succeed makes us not to take action on our goals and dreams. Once we put off an action that may lead to achieving a desired goal; in that moment we are a great fan of procrastination.

The things we fear most are failure; age; judgement from others; no knowledge on how to go about it; the resources aren’t available and so on.You can also check out this previous post on 5 Easy Ways You Can Turn Failures Into Success.

Fear hinders us from achieving what we want in life. I have a friend of mine with whom we share a lot when it comes to writing and blogging. We even got an action against procrastination which I will put up in another post in the coming days if I don’t procrastinate :). He usually tells me “the fear of failure is the beginning of failure”. That is perfectly true because once we open the door to fear, procrastination comes in and installs itself comfortably.

Fear pushes us to kill our dreams and goals. It is better to start something at any age than to regret not starting at all.

Also it is so easy to come up with excuses for our behaviour. These excuses are the foundations on which we build procrastination.

I have been struggling to overcome procastination for as long as I know, it’s a bit better now. I will be sharing with you some tricks on how to reduce this habit in a future post (praying it doesn’t get past my planned time :). 

Have you ever been affected by procrastination? If so do kindly use the comments section below to share your experience with us. Also don’t forget to share this post with your friends and family. Sharing is Caring! You can subscribe below for more updates.