Page 36 - End Procrastination Now Get it Done with a Proven Psychological Approach

4 End Procrastination Now!

Occasional procrastination delays in areas of your life that are
of relatively low importance are not the end of the world. If you
normally shop for groceries once a week and you put off shopping
for a day, this procrastination act is inconsequential. However, per-
sistently putting off a number of minor and middle-valued activi-
ties is self-defeating if you routinely feel swamped by things you
delayed yesterday.
Regardless of whether your procrastination is erratic or persis-
tent, taking action to stop procrastination habits or patterns can
lift artificial limits that you previously placed on your life. Any area
of procrastination is grist for the mill for purposes of teaching
yourself to rid yourself of the procrastination act on the way to
disabling the pattern. This is a radically different way of thinking
from that of time management hawks, whose views are calculated
to get people to work harder and to put out more under umbrella
terms of working smarter and easier.
Some causes of procrastination are social, some are linked to
brain processes, and others are belief-driven or reliant on tem-
perament and mood. Some forms of procrastination can also be
connected to anxiety—feeling uncomfortable about being judged
or evaluated. Combinations of motives for procrastination tend to
vary in each individual situation. However, it is both the consis-
tency of the procrastination process and the great diversity in situ-
ations that set procrastination apart from conditions. A cued panic
reaction normally takes far less time and effort to change than
a broad pattern of procrastination that may show up in different
venues and in surprising and unexpected ways. Let’s take a look
at general forms of procrastination.

Deadline Procrastination

Deadlines have an endpoint and are partially connected to some
sort of rule or regulation that you often can’t control but that re-
quires your compliance. When you think of procrastination, you
may think of missing deadlines or rushing to meet them. That’s