Delay. What is?
Procrastination is basically when a person decides to leave a task to do it later. It’s normal for people to procrastinate from time to time, when it can’t be helped. However, it will turn out to create problems for you if you start procrastinating too many times, especially when it was completely unnecessary for you to do so.
Why do we procrastinate?
Here are 5 reasons I found why some people procrastinate. Mostly related to school life.
1. Fear to fail
Some people, myself included, choose to procrastinate out of fear of failure. We are too afraid of discovering one day that our effort to produce a work will be useless. But then, if we never try, how would we know if our effort has been worth it or not, right? Exactly! This fear, which continues to haunt our minds, is not going to improve anything, it might if we used it as a cautious way of managing work. However, it can usually make us work even less and this is where procrastination comes in. We leave our work to the last minute and rush things, ignoring the details and important parts that would add those extra marks that we potentially would have gotten in our work.
be wise be brave. Remember that failure is part of life, we need to embrace it, learn it!
2. Perfectionism
perfectionism A very good attitude for work that requires careful and detailed attention. However, when people try to be ‘too perfect’, they tend to spend too much time on a particular task that leaves other tasks ‘untouched’. This unbalances the amount of work done. For example, if a student focuses too much on the arts and forgets about other subjects like math and science, she will find herself struggling in math and science in the near future.
Remember: life is full of imperfections. Sure, you can do your best to achieve your best. But, not everything has to be perfect to produce the best. Sometimes imperfection is better than perfection.
3. Confusion and self doubt
Often people don’t get stuck with the assigned task, they get stuck with how to start the task. For example, writing a story for English. They know what the plot of the story is, but they don’t know how to start it. Sometimes they think that their words are not correct and just not good enough. This then takes them away from the task and the word ‘give up’ would emerge in themselves.
Have confidence. Think about the different ways you can start a task and choose the one that you think is best. Don’t spend too much time getting started that you spend less time on the main content.
4. Poor motivation
In everything we do, motivation is one of the most important factors that can affect the quality and pace of work. If you’re motivated, there’s technically no point in doing something. It’s like being a salesperson. If you go around people’s houses, with no enthusiasm to sell, you are practically telling your customers that your product is crap and not worth their time or money. But, if you approach them, with a big smile on your face, with confidence and motivation, you are showing that you are sure that they will like your product and that it will be worth their time and money. It’s the same concept with motivation: when you have little or little motivation, you’ll put in less effort and produce lower quality work. On the other hand, if you are highly motivated, you will want to work harder and you will want to produce the best possible result.
No matter how tired you are, think about the benefit of doing the work, either to get straight A*s or to impress your mom. Your effort will always have its reward.
5. Lack of priorities
People, especially students, often have little sense of priorities. They cannot decide which tasks are more important. Some choose to start with the difficult tasks first and then focus on the easier tasks. Personally, I would recommend starting with the easy parts first, as you’ll be more satisfied with your progress and more likely to stick with the job. From my point of view, people can usually get discouraged by difficult tasks and completely give up doing other equally important tasks and jobs.
Make a list of what needs to be done, decide which are the most important. If you can’t decide, just plan your time so that all the jobs that need to be done have a reasonable amount of time, so you can focus on each one.
