Procrastination: Reasons and Solutions

ByProf. Ajmal Dass Jaipal March 13, 2021

Habitual and intentional putting off the doing of something that should have been done is called procrastination or delay. Procrastination has short term benefits but long term cost because your focus is to live in our comfort zone; not accepting the stretch or learning zone. The outcomes of procrastination are worry, stress, guilt and uneasiness because you are not doing your work in the best possible way.

Reasons of Procrastination

No one wants to procrastinate intentionally. Actually when you procrastinate, you have some logic or reason in your mind. Following are the main reasons of procrastination.

Perfectionist’s fear

Actually subconscious mind is running your consciousness and when perfection is in your mind you try to delay things to attain the high level of perfection.

You avoid taking actions because negative visualization and fear of failure may be prevailing on your mind. In fact, 100% perfection is an ideal approach and cannot be achieved practically because deficiency will remain after every effort.

The solution of this reason of procrastination is positive visualization of your actions and its results. You should also keep in your mind that refinement is a gradual process, not any destination for which we can strive.

Lack of Action

When you are a good thinker and planner but not a good actor, you fall a prey to procrastination. Sometimes, you are also suffering from paralysis at analysis because you make lame excuses of analyzing the things and situations and in this process of analysis you take long time and opportunity is wasted from your hands.

To avoid procrastination, write a timeline of taking actions and break it into smaller portions. Decide a specific time to start and finish an activity and block your time to achieve higher level productivity. Don’t be “Hamlet” who delayed taking right action at right time and faced irreparable loss in his life. Find some mentor or friend who should help you in taking actions and proceeding and fulfilling the tasks.

Multi – Tasking

Sometimes, you are busy in many tasks and don’t know the main goal of your life. Too busy to prioritize your life is a big reason of procrastination. By doing many tasks simultaneously you feel that you are doing many things but in reality, you are losing your focus. The solution of this reason of procrastination is to prioritize your tasks and do your actions accordingly by following the decided path of action.

Focus on present not Future

Helen Keller says: It is very painful to have eyesight but not vision. If you have no vision in life, you will focus on present enjoyments and gains: not on future achievement.

You can avoid procrastination by focusing on your goals and minimizing challenges and problems that come during that journey of success.

This is also the quality of leaders who envision blessings of future because they know that this is the nature’s law to sow seeds and wait for the fruit.

Lack of self-Discipline

Discipline is a small word but its impact on your life is very significant. You know, everything in the universe follows discipline and being a part of universe, we are to follow discipline otherwise we shall be far away from success. As it is said that personal victory leads to public victory; in the same way, self-discipline leads to success and happiness. Self-discipline many be tough for you in the beginning, but its fruit is sweet. Daily and weekly adopt self-discipline write your schedule on your journal and follow it. With the passage of time, it will become your habit and you will move on the path to success.

Ignore value of time

If you are habitual to give value to time, you are successful because the most important commodity in this universe is time. Time once gone, cannot be taken back even by giving worldly wealth. For achieving higher level success, use time effectively and efficiently. For this 4D formula is very effective which means do, delay, delegate and delete.

Do what in important and significant for your goals; delay that thing which can be done later on; delegate that thing which can be done by others and delete which is useless for you and your goals.

By understanding these reasons and following the solutions, you can avoid procrastination and move towards satisfaction, happiness and success.

Best wishes for your success.