Procrastination is a disease that can be pretty hard to manage. When you avoid or delay something that needs to be finished, you create problems that can cause you trouble. Sure, you can procrastinate on some small things like skipping chores at home or big things like paying rent on time.
We all have the tendency to procrastinate without even being aware of it, impacting our personal and professional life, relationships, and even health. The way we do things can either break or make our lives, and obviously, procrastinating isn’t on the good side.
If you want to thrive in particular areas of your life, you should let go of the habit of delaying doing some tasks and develop routines that can make your actions productive. But before that, it’s important to know the habits that make you procrastinate without even being aware of them:
1. Speaking about your plans
Sometimes, we get too excited to the point that we speak put about our plans before we even take a step in carrying them out. Talking about your plans will only eat out the precious time that you could’ve used to bring your pursuits into life.
When you often talk about your plans, there’s a big tendency that you will overanalyze your plan and it will make you overthink the steps you need to take. Before you know it, a project that should’ve only taken you three to four hours ends up taking a whole day since you spend most of your time just thinking and talking instead of making the most of the hour executing them.
Don’t reach out to other people to seek out consolation about your plans— this is another form of procrastination that many people fail to see. Just keep the plans to yourself and get going.
2. Impulsivity
Impulsiveness can be associated with procrastination. If you haven’t noticed, people have the tendency to undervalue the satisfaction and gratification that they may acquire from achieving long-term goals. They self-regulate their behavior and postpone important things, creating a gap between how they intend to act and how they act in reality.
One great example of impulsivity is this: You have very important school work that needs to be done as soon as possible, yet before getting this done, you have the urge inside of your head to tidy up your room, wash the dishes resting on the sink, and clean the yard. The task that needs to be done gets pushed back until you’re right before the deadline.
Procrastinating is normal to each and every person, and this normalization of this habit is the very reason why people end up putting off doing something until the very last minute.
3. Overplanning
Admit it, at some point in your life, you were guilty of this habit. You want something to happen and you create several scenarios inside your head of how things should go, how you should finish the job, and the things that should happen if you encounter a problem.
The time you consume on overplanning and wishful thinking could be used better in actually starting the job. Planning too much will only waste your time than you can afford to waste.
4. You can’t do without your tracker app and smartphone
How many hours do you spend browsing through your phone, looking through feeds and unnecessary things to buy in online stores? You see, the notifications you get on your devices are bait to procrastinators.
A quick peek on your socials to see the things that you might have missed can devour about 30 to 60 minutes of your time. Watching YouTube and scrolling through your Instagram is no good, especially if you’re working on something important.
Put your phone on silent and face it down on the table to avoid seeing notifications coming in. Do yourself this favor and you will be thankful for how productive you can be when you don’t let yourself be distracted by such things.
5. Indecisiveness
Most of often than not, indecision leads to procrastination. It takes place whenever someone needs to make a significant stressful decision but feels overwhelmed by the general options.
Making decisions double-quick isn’t an easy feat because there are factors and issues that need to be given attention. It’s not easy to balance things out and immediately make judgments on how things should go. But not doing can do you more harm than good.
As a result of indecision, many people ended up doing and accomplishing nothing. If you have the guts to make decisions quickly, you will have a lot of time to juggle all possibilities before committing to something.
6. Perfectionism
If you want to do things flawlessly, you won’t get to accomplish something. Since perfectionists are frightened of the thought of being criticized and disappointing people when they fail, they have the tendency of setting aside things if they aren’t 100% sure of the victory of their venture. Hence, fueling procrastination.
People who demand the highest standards of themselves won’t settle for anything less, so they often delay starting, worrying about what would happen if they won’t be able to execute it the way they want.
Rather than getting things done with what they have, they go after ideals that aren’t even achievable because there’s no such thing as real perfection.
7. You enjoy urgency
There are people who get delighted by the fact that they get things done quickly when the situation strongly calls for it. They believe that they can work better on a particular task urgently. However, enjoying urgency is like the illusion of productivity when working in an emergency. You shouldn’t be like this.
A different level of satisfaction comes when you get to finish your job before the deadline. Don’t take pride in getting your job done despite the insufficient time you have in your hands— this isn’t sustainable and would only leave you in a tough spot sooner or later.
If you would let go of this habit, you will see your performance and outputs improve in due course.
