Why do you procrastination

This may look like 10 minutes of social media or web browsing before lunch and 20 minutes after dinner. Again, this only works if you keep yourself accountable and track your activities, but with a little motivation, it can certainly help you achieve tasks and actually enjoy your well-earned free time.

The want-self loves scrolling through Instagram, binging Netflix shows and shopping online, while the should-self is constantly anxious about the tasks that must be completed. Although the want-self is often stronger, the should-self is smarter and can grow stronger with consistency. Just being mindful of this distinction can help you notice when you are procrastinating and foresee the emotional consequences that are soon to come.

Our emotions change the way we view a task, often leading to procrastination. Negative emotions contribute to procrastination, which lead to more negative emotions.

Help relieve the guilt and harm that follows delaying a task by showing compassion and forgiving yourself. Try to accept that some tasks will lead to stress, but it can be defined as good stress, or eustress , that needs to be worked through. Josh Axe is on a mission to provide you and your family with the highest quality nutrition tips and healthy recipes in the world What Is Procrastination?

How to Stop Procrastinating. More Health Dr. Axe on Facebook 22 Dr. Axe on Twitter 0 Dr. Axe on Instagram Dr. Which, again, leads to procrastination. Although the locus of control is difficult to change, you can practice not letting it drive your actions. Even if you have this innate feeling that the world has conspired to get you to where you are today, decide that you will take charge of one aspect of your life starting today.

May it be health, fitness, finances, romantic relationships, or anything else. Hold yourself responsible and decide that from now on, you will take action, no matter what your past looked like. Another way most people fall prey to procrastination is through fear in the face of a massive challenge. As one of the most powerful emotions, fear can change our actions despite our logical thinking.

Above, we talked about having a vision, and I called it an audacious or grand one. Those dreams will translate into equally big and bold goals. The bigger the goals, the more chances your motivation will turn into fear, and when fear creeps in, you freeze.

Procrastination, in this case, comes from paralysis because you were thinking too big, too soon. There are several ways you can go around thinking too big, but one of the best is to develop the skill to divide and conquer. That means practicing slicing those big goals into smaller, manageable action steps that you can take right away and move forward. With every step, the big goal will seem less scary, and fear will be less likely to paralyze you.

The environment in which we operate has a direct influence on our actions, behaviors, and attitudes. Most people find themselves in an environment and begin to adapt or mold to that environment.

But when the environment is prone or inviting to distractions, your ability to concentrate and focus on your tasks will suffer. We know that to concentrate, we need an environment conducive to such focus and starved of distractions. Instead, learn how to create your environment in a way that is favorable to focused work and free of distractions.

You can have distractions, so long as they are on your terms. If you find it hard to clean your house because you keep watching TV, unplug it. When you find it impossible to write your book or thesis because you keep checking Facebook, add a blocker to your browser.

The idea here is to find ways to prevent you from becoming distracted and, instead, invite you to do the things you have to do. Whereas the reasons above have all been shown to induce procrastination in various forms and levels, the critical piece here is understanding what makes you procrastinate.

Often, you blame procrastination on the most apparent reason, but it might turn out to be something else upon further analysis.

To get to the root of things, you need to sharpen your self-awareness and spend some time reflecting and introspecting. Only when you truly understand what are the reasons behind your procrastination can you shift gears and work toward reducing and, in time, obliterating it.

It requires you to change your mindset and be self-aware enough to accept that you procrastinate and decide to do something about it. When your mindset is right, procrastination has no chance. Please share your answers in the comments below. Sharing knowledge helps us all improve and get better! Hi there! I write about personal development, productivity, fiction writing, and more. People sometimes avoid taking action in the present because they intend or hope to pursue a more attractive course of action in the future.

This mindset can lead to long-term procrastination, and persist even in cases where the person who is procrastinating never ends up following through on their intended plan. People sometimes procrastinate on tasks because they are optimistic about their ability to complete those tasks in the future. For example, a student might decide to postpone getting started on an assignment that is due a few weeks from now, because they feel that there will be plenty of time to get it done later. In many cases, this form of optimism might occur as a result of underestimating the time it will take to complete the tasks in questions; this phenomenon is known as the planning fallacy , and it can lead both procrastinators as well as non-procrastinators to assume that they will finish upcoming tasks earlier than they actually will.

Similarly, a person might decide, after struggling to get started on a task, to postpone it to the next day, because they believe that tomorrow they will be able to bring themself to work on it, even if they have postponed the same task in the exact same manner several times in the past.

People sometimes procrastinate because they are unable to make decisions in a timely manner. There are various factors that generally make it more likely that someone will get stuck over-thinking the situation while trying to make a decision, a phenomenon which is sometimes referred to as analysis paralysis or choice paralysis. The main factors to consider, from a practical perspective, are the following:. Accordingly, the more decisions you have to make during a certain time period, the more you deplete your capacity for self-control, and the more likely you are to procrastinate in making future decisions, at least until you have a chance to recharge yourself mentally.

Finally, note that this form of procrastination is generally referred to as decisional procrastination , since it involves a delay in making a decision. People sometimes procrastinate because they feel overwhelmed with regard to the tasks that they need to handle. A feeling of overwhelm can occur due to a variety of reasons, such as having a single task that feels huge in terms of scope, or having a large number of small tasks that add up.

When this happens, a person might simply decide to avoid the tasks in question, or they might attempt to handle them, but then end up feeling paralyzed before those tasks are completed. For example, if you need to clean up your entire house, the fact that the task will take so long and involve so many parts might cause you to feel overwhelmed, in which case you might avoid getting started on it in the first place.

People sometimes procrastinate because they feel anxious about a task that they need to handle. People often procrastinate because they are averse to the tasks that they need to perform. This occurs because, in general, the more people find a certain task unappealing, the more likely they are to want to avoid it, and therefore the more likely they are to procrastinate.

Note that there are many things that can make a person averse to a task in a way that causes them to procrastinate on it. For example, a person might procrastinate because they perceive a task as frustrating, tedious, or boring, or they might procrastinate because they believe there is a gap between the difficulty of the task and their own competence, which means that they feel that the task is too difficult for them to handle.

People sometimes procrastinate as a result of their perfectionism. For example, someone might delay working on their book, because they want every line that they write down to be perfect from the start, which causes them to not write anything at all.

People sometimes procrastinate because they are afraid of being evaluated or because they are afraid of receiving negative feedback from others. Whether the influence of this fear is positive or negative depends on a variety of factors, such as how anxious a person feels about the upcoming evaluation, and how confident they are in their ability to successfully handle the task at hand. This fear of failure can promote procrastination in various ways, such as by causing people to avoid finishing a task, or by causing them to avoid getting started on a task in the first place.

For example, someone might be so worried that their business idea will fail, that they end up continuing to work on it indefinitely, without ever making it available to the public. Furthermore, certain personality traits , such as low self-esteem and low self-confidence, are associated with an increased fear of failure, which makes people who have these traits more likely to procrastinate.

Moreover, fear of failure is an especially serious issue among those who suffer from high levels of self-doubt, and particularly among those who are prone to having negative, irrational beliefs about their abilities. Conversely, when people feel that they are well-equipped to deal with a certain task, fear of failure can serve as a motivating factor, that encourages people to avoid procrastinating.

For example, someone might be confident in their ability to perform a task well but still worry about receiving unjustified negative feedback from others, or they might worry about failing at something even if no one else will know about it. People sometimes procrastinate as a way of placing barriers in their own way , so that if they fail their failures could be attributed to their procrastination rather than their abilities, a behavior which is referred to as self-handicapping.

For example, a student might procrastinate instead of studying for a test, because they prefer knowing that they failed due to their procrastination, instead of knowing that they failed because they were unable to understand the material well.

As a result of this defense mechanism, certain procrastinators spend more time procrastinating if they believe that they are likely to fail when it comes to the task at hand, especially if they feel that failure will reflect badly on them. Sirois led a study in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine that found that people with heart disease were more likely than healthy people to self-identify as procrastinators. According to the study, procrastinators with hypertension and heart disease were less likely to take action to cope with their illness, such as changing their diet or exercising.

By overcoming your tendency to stall, then, you can improve your mental and physical well-being. Practice self-compassion. Procrastinators are often hard on themselves. They might feel guilt about letting others down or be appalled by their own slowness.

To counter that, treat yourself with kindness and understanding. Ferrari offers a similar suggestion to avoiders, who procrastinate for fear of being judged: Focus on doing your best, instead of getting caught in the trap of worrying about what others think. Attach meaning to the task. One of the best ways to stop procrastinating, Sirois said, is to find meaning in the task in question. Think about how completing it will be valuable to your personal growth or happiness.

Doing so will help you feel more connected to the task and less likely to procrastinate, Sirois said.