Overcoming Procrastination

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“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.” ~ William James.

Procrastination is the biggest hindrance to success. Some people procrastinate only occasionally while others are chronic procrastinators, procrastinating to the point where it affects their job performance, their grades, the scholarships they don’t get, their personal life, even their health.

In fact most of us are guilty of procrastinating on the health front. We know what we need to do to be healthy but we don’t do it. We are always planning to give up sodas and sweets tomorrow, or start exercising next week or next month or when we finish this big work project or when the baby learns to walk or when the baby starts school or when….

And in the meantime, our body is suffering – we keep polluting it with foods that are harmful, literally clogging our arteries and encouraging the growth of cancer cells. We keep leading a sedentary lifestyle that encourages joint problems and heart disease. Then when the diagnosis finally comes, we sit back wishing we had done things differently – wishing desperately that we could back in time and do what we were supposed to do when we were supposed to do it. We find oursevles wishing fervently that we had not procrastinated.

What is procrastination?

The common feature of procrastination is that we put off doing something we don’t feel like doing (something that we need to get done), and we regret it later. The reason we procrastinate is that there is some feature of doing it that we dislike – perhaps it takes time, or effort that we would rather spend doing something else. Perhaps we hate knowing that we “must” do something. Perhaps we simply just dislike the activity.

The question that is of real value is not why we procrastinate, for there are as many reasons as there are people, but the critical question is “Why do we finally stop procrastinating and do it?”.

When do we stop procrastinating?

Well, we finally take action when the cost of not taking action becomes too high. When the doctor says that you must quit smoking or die of lung cancer within the next six months suddenly you find the motivation to stop smoking. When the diagnosis of heart disease or cancer comes back suddenly we find the motivation to eat right and exercise for 30 minutes every day.

We stop procrastinating when we are sufficiently motivated to stop.

How to stop procrastinating?

So how can we provide ourselves with that motivation to overcome procrastination before the consequences become too dire? There are a variety of ways and I advocate that you use as many of them as necessary. At some times one method will work for you and at another time it may not and you will need to try another method. The important factor is to keep trying different methods until one works to help you overcome your procratination. Over the next several articles I will discuss various different methods including examining the consequences, the 10-minute rule and staying focused.

“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.” ~ Olin Miller.

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Related Articles:

• Achieving Your Goals – The Power of Persistence
• Achieving Your Goals – The Power of Consistency
• How to become an Optimist – Part I
• Relationship Dynamics – How to get the relationship you want
• How to Fight Depression Naturally
• How to Stop Worrying and Be Relaxed – An Experiment
• How to be Happy – Training yourself to enjoy life
• How to choose your perfect mate, spouse or life partner
• Coping with Stress – Part I
• How to Quit Smoking Naturally – Part I
• Achieving Your Goals Part I – Goal Identification
• Achieving Your Goals Part II – Form a Plan
• Achieving Your Goals Part III – Make a Commitment
• Achieving Your Goals Part IV – Staying Motivated
• Achieving Your Goals Part V – Change Your Environment
• Achieving Your Goals Part VI – Change Your Thinking
• Achieving Your Goals Part VII – Discipline and Vocabulary

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 9:19 am and is filed under A New Start, Choices, Goals, Motivation, Self Discipline . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.