What Is Hidden Behind The Habit Of Procrastinating?

Do you remember that phrase that we were so often told “ don’t put off for tomorrow what you can do today ”? Procrastinating is doing exactly the opposite of that. But what is behind this behavior?

People who procrastinate often cannot avoid this habit. It’s like a greater force that sometimes has nothing to do with laziness, but with other factors.

Today we are going to discover some of them.

Aspects related to the habit of procrastinating

1. Anxiety

Many people tend to procrastinate because they don’t know how to properly manage their emotions  and the stress they feel turns into anxiety.

They tend to have anxious, distracting personalities who may see a project as too big and impossible to complete. Faced with all this, they decide to postpone what they have to do.

Sometimes it’s not that they have other projects to pursue. That’s why they often  tend to waste time or devote it to smaller projects  when the project they’re putting off has a special priority.

Some ways in which people with anxiety tend to procrastinate in these circumstances are through self-deception or excuses such as the following:

• “I’m not really focused right now, I’ll do it tomorrow, when I’m more inspired.”
• “I’m not doing very well, I’m going to do these more mechanical tasks and I’m going to do it, seriously, when I’m better.”
• “I have other tasks that I can finish now, I’ll dedicate myself to them and I’ll save this one for the end.”

As we can see,  people with anxiety seek an immediate reward  to eliminate this uncomfortable feeling. However, in the long run, this can get worse as time passes.

2. Lack of organization

When we talk about procrastinating, the person who does it is likely  to have a serious organizational  problem. Each of us must find the way that best suits our organizational needs, because for each person this is different.

However, it is always necessary to take into account, as we said before, the priority of the task in question.

There are different tasks that we can afford to procrastinate on, either because we can plan for them, put them off for another day, and even delegate them to other people.

However, it  often happens that we procrastinate on tasks that have a special priority. Therefore, good organization can help us to stop procrastinating and, when the time comes, we feel that time is falling on us.

For this reason, it is essential to prioritize the important tasks.

3. The error of underestimating time

Underestimating time is something non-punctual people know very well. They think they have more time than they really have to do certain things before going out with friends, for example.

People who procrastinate tend to underestimate time, although this is directly related to some of the excuses they make for themselves.

For example, a person who procrastinates thinks he can accomplish the project at hand in two days. However, the common is that there is some complication, doubt or problem that makes this deadline to be extended.

For this reason,  underestimating the amount of time a task requires can cause us to get stressed out,  break deadlines, and not do our job as well as we should. All of this results in unrewarding results.

The sooner we get rid of a task that motivates us, the sooner we will be free to complete others with less effort, but this will allow us to feel that we have already come a long way.

Surely we all remember what we were told in our school days: “Start by doing the exercises or studying the subject you like the most”.

Very wise advice that can be extrapolated to other areas such as work.