Have you wondered why some of us seem less successful than our contending counterparts in the race called career? Some of us have been bewitched by the enchantment of procrastination. According to a version of the definition of procrastination adapted from Wikipedia, procrastination means “practice of doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones, or carrying out less urgent task instead of more urgent ones, thus putting off impending tasks to a later time”.
Many a man has procrastination damage physical, spiritual or their psychological life. Man is by nature a lazy and procrastinating being, but few of us have been able to liberate our physical and metaphysical being from the shackles of procrastination. A business man that indulges in procrastinating will end up having more clients who dump his business service. A boss who postpones staff urgent minute is putting his/her enterprise at risk. Also, a student that lusts after pleasurable activities over the academic research he/she is supposed to execute is a victim of the ‘procrastinating Syndrome’.
Have you been procrastinating? What has procrastination cost you? Is procrastination your habit? Or has it cost you productivity in your career? Has it shaped you into giving excuses instead of results? Here are few tips to help you overcome the power of procrastination and acquire the immunity status over procrastination.
Know Yourself
According to the popular dictum of Socrates, he purports that “an unexamined life is not worth living”. The first step to overcoming procrastination is by knowing who you are, by having a dialogue with the man within to know if he is a procrastinator or a proactive being. If one fails to know oneself, it may be impossible to overcome procrastination. Ask self-assessing questions like what are my weaknesses? What are my strengths? Am I setting ideal or realistic goals? Do I execute pleasurable things over urgent tasks? Make a to-do list of your activities over time, check activities you have done under the chain of pleasure and those you executed without pleasure. Having discovered where you stand with procrastination, you can then move to the next phase of annihilating procrastination in your life.
Set Realistic Goals
Setting realistic goals is a vital key to overcoming procrastination. Having prolific goals may fuel procrastination. Setting realistic goals is having priorities and drafting preferential chart. Having too many goals at a time will result in achieving nothing. Practically, when you have a long list of tasks to carry out and you fail to set the realistic one over the less realistic will eventually make the entire task unrealistic. Therefore, when you have been able to set affront realistic goals, one is on the path of curing oneself of procrastination.
Stay Positive and Optimistic
Staying positive and optimistic also helps overcome procrastination. Never prophesy negativity or pessimism in whatever task you are setting out to embark on. A pinch of pessimism will make you drag foot on a task or pile it to the next day activities. Thus, key into the idea of being optimistic and positive.
Motivate Yourself
Motivation is also an important ingredient of curing yourself of procrastination. After you have realised a set goal reward yourself with something motivational. Rewarding oneself does not mean paying oneself. It could be taking oneself out, going to see a movie, or buying oneself a special treat. It may seem funny doing all these, but it will eventually boost one’s morale of embarking on another task. Or why do we think a soldier chant the morale song, obviously to keep him going.
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