Why Procrastination Is More Than We Think

Procrastination: we know it’s bad for us but do it anyway. I recently came across this interesting concept that procrastination is not so much of a time-management issue but a coping mechanism to manage negative emotions induced by certain tasks.

To better understand this, we can ask the question: why do we usually procrastinate? It often happens when we feel bored, fearful of getting started on something challenging or resentment towards the thing we’re doing.

Although the tasks we procrastinate on induce those negative emotions, they get us closer to accomplishing our goals.

Procrastination is a sign confirming that the thing is good for us. The more resistance we feel, the bigger and better it is for our lives.

And we can leverage that awareness of why it is we are procrastinating to help us overcome that hesitation and go towards the thing we’re putting off!

So despite knowing all of this, we still find it difficult to overcome procrastination. Here are some ways to manage the feelings that stimulate procrastination.

Firstly, it’s worth acknowledging the feelings and thoughts you’re experiencing.
Now try to ease those emotions by thinking about what you’d usually do to get started on that task and tell yourself to do that for only 5 minutes. Simply getting started is the key, motivation follows on from that.
You’ll realise you might have spent more than 5 minutes on that task- that’s the motivation working its magic. So it’s not as bad as you thought once you started eh? Take a second to applaud yourself!
Consider how you can place obstacles between you and your temptations. If you check your phone first thing in the morning which actually ends up being a social media scroll in bed, leave it outside your bedroom before you sleep (with the volume up if you use it as an alarm clock).

This way, you’re able to add more resistance to the procrastination cycle. Similarly, you can reduce the resistance that’s stopping you from doing your important tasks.

So there it is! Procrastination may have its downsides but we can take advantage of it to make better choices.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this down below! If you want to read more, here’s an article that I found useful.