Habits can either build you or destroy you. One that falls into the destructive bucket is the habit of Procrastination. This is one of the most harmful things to avoid as it could consume your time, energy & life. Overcoming procrastination is not hard if you keep track of your life habits and learn the do (s) & don’t (s) consistently.
Here are the 5 things you need to avoid in order to defeat procrastination:
1. Unclear Goals
Having clarity in your goals is the primary step in climbing on the many steps to succeed in your life. If your goals are unclear, your blueprint to your daily life would suffer from inaccuracy. This is not what you want in life. Everybody wants to have a progressive growth in life.
If growth is your objective, then you need to define your every step forward. Everyday’s work is like a penny added to your million-dollar bank account. So, you need to be clear on what, how, where & when to work. For this reason, you need a clear reason to work, which are your goals. Having your goals well-defined is ultra important.
2. Not being Accountable
In school or in college or at work, being accountable is being responsible about one’s own goals and responsibilities. If you’re being accountable then you’ll be a self-driven person pulling yourself to work towards your own objectives. Whereas, being unaccountable requires someone to constantly monitor your deeds. If not supervised, then you would get lethargic.
Procrastination comes from postponing your tasks to a later time or day. This is purely the result of not being accountable to one’s own goals & objectives. So, as one of the most important steps to overcome procrastination, you need to be a responsible & accountable person to yourself. If you decide you’ll do something on a particular date, never back off. By all means, be focused in completing the same to gain self-respect in your own eyes.
3. Blurred Priorities
Priorities help you in building a hierarchy to your workflow on a daily basis. If you do not have clearly defined priorities, it could easily affect your growth by leading to a confused mindset. Procrastination is nothing but an outcome of an unplanned work style.
As a simple step in overcoming procrastination, you need to be well-planned with your priorities. If you have a clear road map as to what your daily objectives are, your task is to close all those open items on a daily basis. This would help you to become more self sustained in your daily work habits. In spite of the many distractions in recent times, your planning can take you a long way, while also helping you fight your habit of postponing.
4. Over-Promising
As a rule of thumb, it is important to never over-promise yourself. This is because promising more than what you can leaves you more room for failure. The more times you fail to complete your objectives, the more you’d get demotivated. This paves a way for you to stay away from performing more, eventually leading you to procrastinate.
Therefore, it is better to under-promise yourself and to over-deliver than to do the opposite. Everytime, you complete your objectives, you get a sense of accomplishment. This is a positive sign to appreciate yourself because you achieved a little milestone in your daily work routine. So, as clearly seen, procrastination can be overcome by being on top of your goals & your objectives.
5. Being a Perfectionist
Being a perfectionist at everything you do could lead you to procrastinating. It is because when you work on your daily tasks & assignments and if you want to be perfect at your very first try, it puts an astounding amount of pressure on yourself. Normally, getting perfect at performing tasks comes as a result of consistently working over a period of time. Instead of giving yourself the time to get flawless, if you rush yourself, then you obviously would tend to start postponing your assignments & works.
To avoid getting into this trap of perfectionism, you can give yourself the time to nurture yourself through the imperfections. Everytime you make a mistake in your task, you learn a way on how not to perform the given work. Using this alternative approach can indirectly open a whole different perspective on how to overcome procrastination, rather than sabotaging yourself.
Conclusion
Little steps can take you a long-way. If you correct your imperfections, one at a time, it could make you a better human over time. Like any habits, which we form as time passes, procrastination is an acquired habit too. If you decide to overcome the tendency, you can certainly do so, by following the tiny step-by-step procedures discussed here. It would be your roadmap in overcoming your acquired negative habit into positive.
