What is ‘Procrastination‘? It simply means, ‘delaying what needs to be done’. So what can one do to say ‘Goodbye to Procrastination’?
It is a known fact that, when we put off or delay doing work, we are actually inviting anxiety and stress. The thought that something has to be done is constantly on our minds. It actually makes us unhappy.
When I look around, I find that there are many people who love to put off what needs to be done – whether it is official or personal work, while there are others; who finish all they have to do well in time.
This set me thinking as to why this difference. So, I decided to conduct a bit of research on why some people procrastinate and why some are proactive.
I randomly asked people from different age groups (without revealing the objective of my study) just one question, “If you have an assignment or a task that needs to be done, what do you tell yourself?” I spoke to over 80 people, and the answers were surprisingly very similar depending on their personality types.
Typically, the ones who procrastinate gave different reasons to the ones who were proactive. To summarise they said:
The Procrastinators
The Proactive Folk
The answers made it very clear to me that, it is actually what we tell ourselves that makes us either procrastinate or be proactive.
I was reading the book Ikigai – The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Albert Liebermann and Hector Garcia. In it, I found that according to the researcher Owen Schaffer of DePaul University, there are 7 conditions that are mandatorily required to achieve ‘flow’. They are:
- Knowing what to do
- Knowing how to do it
- Knowing how well you are doing
- Knowing where to go (where navigation is involved)
- Perceiving significant challenges
- Perceiving significant skills
- Being free from distractions
Schaffer also proposes the following strategies for experiencing ‘flow‘:
- Choose a difficult task (but not too difficult!)
- Have a clear, concrete objective
- Concentrate on a single task
When I pondered over this, I realised that it is most important to get into the ‘flow‘. According to me, therefore, the first thing to do to get into the ‘flow’ is to change what we tell ourselves. In other words, it means to change our self-talk.
Our brain loves to play mind games and it tricks us into believing and acting as per its prompting, but it is also a proven thing that if the brain is trained by telling it to do a particular thing, it will then start responding as per our command. Therefore, we must start changing what we tell ourselves. If we want to do something, we must keep repeating that to ourselves.
So, why get stressed with tasks piling up? Say goodbye to procrastination!
