Procrastination II
Last blog I left off with having you make a short list of tasks or areas you procrastinate on the left half of a page, and a short list of areas or tasks where procrastination is not a problem on the other half of the page. Don’t go away if you haven’t done that!
If you didn’t do that, but are still interested in tracking down your pesky procrastination spots, you can do that now, or you can just name two or three in your mind, putting them on your fingers.
First, no guilt for the problem areas. Everybody procrastinates. Why is that? Why do we not do that which we really want to do, or need to do–but just not yet.
You can go into the science, the psychology, but very briefly, the main reasons for procrastination are
- Fear. The project is so overwhelming that we are bowed down just thinking about it.
- Fear. We are afraid we don’t have the skills or ability to do a good job.
- Fear. We are afraid we will look stupid.
- Uncertainty. We don’t know what to do.
- Uncertainty. We don’t know expectations of someone we are accountable to and are afraid to ask. We are afraid of their response if we ask, and afraid of their response if we go ahead but do it wrong. So we’re paralyzed about even thinking about it.
- Uncertainty. We don’t know what we are supposed to be doing, and what others in the group are supposed to be doing.
- Anger. We are angry at the unfairness of our group members, of the professor, of the universe. So we do nothing. (This is called passive aggression, or aiming for the enemy and shooting yourself in the foot.)
- We don’t want to do it.
- We ran out of time, again and again–doing a job, meeting family commitments, going to class, solving computer issues, going to group meetings, listening to a friend, paying bills, kids, relationships–we have too many balls to juggle.
Let me know if I’ve missed any that you can identify.
In the meantime, go back to your short list of procrastination areas. Identify which of the nine apply to each area. You might have a little tightening of the gut, racing of the pulse, but you have also kicked the cognitive problem-solving part of your brain into gear. Good on you!! This is the kind of thinking that eventually puts you in the driver’s seat of where your time goes, of what gets done.
Next time, a more positive exercise and you can guess which side of the page we’ll be focussing on. And let me know your key reasons for procrastinating–are they some of these, or do you have others? [email protected]