6 tips to stop procrastinating, grow your talent and be productive!

Posted on April 23, 2020 by Marta Mandolini, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Procrastination is usually defined as that behaviour that pushes to voluntarily delay an action, replacing priority and important activities with pleasant activities or less relevant or urgent tasks. Despite probable negative future consequences, procrastinators opt for short-term pleasure at the cost of long-term benefits.
If you are reading this article, this may sound familiar to you!
This choice can cause problems at work and / or in social life, negatively influencing self-esteem and confidence, interfering with productivity, the expression of your talent, with achievement of goals and fulfilment of desires.

There are different cognitive and emotional causes to procrastination, such as laziness, perfectionism, fear of failure or fear of success, or fear of responsibilities, disinterestedness, anger, a maladaptive management of stress and anxiety, etc.

For example, in case of a perfectionist procrastinator, the person may postpone duties because she wants to complete the task perfectly, and never feels ready or confident enough about her abilities, knowledge or skills.
In case of a person who feels fear of success, she may feels she doesn’t deserve it and experiences a kind of sense of guilt or in case of a person who feels fear of failure, she may believe that she will definitely get a failure and therefore it is better not to try.

Whatever the causes of procrastination, this may activate a circle of excuses, pessimism and fears, but fortunately humans are gifted with decision making skills.
Yes, procrastination is your own choice! Since you are in the vicious circle, procrastination becomes somehow automatic, but you can decide to work on it!

Here are a few tips I want to share with you. Of course they may not be comprehensive, since every procrastinator is unique!

-Identify the area/areas of your life (work, family, housework, health…)you procrastinate most. Usually we procrastinate in one or two areas more than others, and reflecting on this will increase your awareness. Also you can discover that there are areas in your life where you do not procrastinate and find useful strategies from there!

-Lists all the benefits you will get if you stop procrastinating. This will boost your energy, keep your motivation high and be more optimistic. If you like drawing you can draw a picture of your task completed and hang it somewhere you can see everyday!

-List possible causes related to procrastination. I wrote a few above, but everybody is unique, so there may be different causes causes or experiences in you case. Writing them down will increase your self knowledge and help you in preventing them in the present. For example if you know that you procrastinate because of perfectionism you may ask somebody to help you in marking the actual things needed to achieve a task , so you don’t overwork your task.

-List the excuses you find to prevent your self from starting or continuing the activity. This will ring as an alarm clock next time you use an excuse.

-Set your self a clear, realistic objective to reach and create a time frame for its achievement. No too hard, not too easy: challenging. Depending on your “procrastination style” you may decide to set yourself an objective which gives you some hurry, or an objective that makes you comfortable with. Don’t forget to praise your self for any small achievements you create!

-Be gentle with yourself, you are not going to quit procrastination in one day, and if you are reading this article this is a great step….. but not enough! Continue your personal research, you are not alone, and you can stop procrastination, grow your talent, and fulfill your dreams, if you really decide to!