All Things Inspired

You don't have to be great to start...but you do have to start to be great!

As you continue your journey of growth, beware the pitfall known as procrastination. I hope that you are engaged in your growth journey because you want to become the best version of yourself. If you've come this far, you are well on your way to achieving transformational growth. Where procrastination is concerned, just remember that you don't have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great!

Why do we procrastinate anyway? Let me think about that and I'll get back to you. Just a little procrastination humor there! Everyone at times can be a procrastinator. However, if you struggle to get through a day without putting off tasks and goals on a regular basis, you probably suffer from chronic procrastination. Procrastination is usually associated with laziness, however it's not the same at all. Laziness tends to be associated with the lack of willingness or effort to act, while procrastination, on the other hand, doesn't just happen; but is often created by some type of trigger. To give you a better understanding of what that is, here are some common triggers, or causes of procrastination...

We have a false sense that we work better under pressure - while this may be true, that you may do your best work under pressure, are you really doing your best work that way? Probably not, and if you really examined this situation, you might be surprised that it isn't remotely close to being your best work.
We think we have time - you may have found that you underestimated the amount of time you had ahead of a deadline. Is your mind tricking you into thinking that if your deadline is several weeks away, that you have plenty of time and other items might demand your attention ahead of this deadline?
You become paralyzed by anxiety - fear of failure can create in our mind that the task ahead is just not possible. When you fixate on this frame of mind, it can literally paralyze you from taking the first step. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step." When you take that first step, then the second step seems more achievable. Then the third, then the next step, and the next step after that, and before you know it, you've broken out of the paralysis that froze your steps to progress.
You have general avoidance - this tends to happen when we think that we just don't like the task ahead. The more we avoid the things we don't like, the more likely we are to add tasks to this category because it's an easy out. But if you change your mindset to tackle these difficult and unpopular tasks first your sense of accomplishment will provide you with exponential satisfaction. You can say "I did it! I accomplished something difficult." When this happens to you, you'll soon realize that the other tasks ahead of you will seem much easier to conquer.
You are overwhelmed into surrender - like general avoidance in #4, you may feel that the task ahead is either just too large to manage or perhaps you just don't even know where to begin taking on the task. This too can be a scary feeling to have. To overcome this feeling of being overwhelmed, you must take a moment to analyze the task ahead, break it down into smaller groupings of tasks, and prioritize these to accomplish it. Then as we covered in #4, you must take the first step. Then the next and the next.
Avoid the squirrels - it's the "oh look, a squirrel" moments that can derail your progress. Giving into the distractions around you is a common occurrence for many. But if these distractions become tantalizing to the point that you regularly surrender to them, they become problematic. You must set the environment in which you are working in to eliminate the squirrels. Use the attractive distraction as a reward for completing your tasks. Take the problem and recreate it into a useful tool to accomplish your task.
Waiting for perfection - you may not consider an overthinker to be someone who would procrastinate. However, overthinkers are people who tend to wait until every detail is determined before they carry out a task. Therefore, waiting for perfection creates the overthinker to be a procrastinator. I believe it was General George Patton who said, "A good plan acted on today, is better than a perfect plan tomorrow."

Looking at some of those triggers that can cause procrastination, you might have noticed that these are centered around thoughts and perceptions. And with words such as paralyzed, avoidance, and overwhelmed, you would probably associate these thoughts with fears. I think it's fair then to ask the question, how can procrastination take over your life?

Procrastinators tend to have higher levels of anxiety than those who don't procrastinate. Procrastination can impact your mental health as well as your physical health. And this can adversely affect your career path. The triggers we noted earlier in this article are all part of what is termed as Task Paralysis. Yes, this is real! It's the inability to act, even if you understand that it is important, or you urgently want to complete the task. This perpetual cycle can resemble something like this...

Trouble prioritizing and beginning the task.
Tend to worry about the outcome or consequences of the task.
Overwhelmed with the task ahead.
Tend to avoid it all together for unknown reasons.
Stressing about timeliness of completion.
Wait until the last minute.
Embarrassed of the task completion or competency.
You know it needs to be done, but ultimately you put it off until tomorrow.

That's the elements of the procrastination cycle. Here's the lasting effects of procrastination...

You sabotage your opportunities for career success. Regret usually follows.
Goals become unrealistic the longer you allow procrastination.
You begin to create doubt within yourself, thus limiting your self-belief.
Fosters a pattern of making bad decisions.
Destroys your reputation, personally and professionally.
Damages your self-esteem, which leads to mental and physical health problems.

Can you begin to see how procrastination can have a profoundly negative impact on you? Stress, anxiety, shattered dreams, and personal well-being are just a few of the symptoms that make you feel like you're stuck in quicksand. It will seem to you that the harder you try to break free, the deeper you sink. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can take control of your outcome. To help you with this, next week's article will wrap up this topic with the probable causes of procrastination and how to overcome it! Don't wait for things to happen this week, make it happen and...

Be inspired! Inspire others!