The Habit Of Postponing Everything: Procrastination
There is a room full of books and junk that are not used, but are not given away, recycled or sold.
There has been an aspiration to study a professional career for years, but the decision to do so and begin the development of a vocation has never been made.
It is known that an essay has an exact deadline, and you have to sit down and write, but perhaps watching a movie is more tempting. Finally, procrastination, this habit of postponing everything for later, ends up being the great winner
Etymologically, “procrastination” comes from the Latin: pro, forward, and crastinus, referring to the future, postponement or postponement. Therefore, procrastination can be defined as the tendency to waste time, delay, and intentionally postpone tasks or situations instead of facing them.
This is an irrational process, given that the priority of feeling good in the present moment prevails over its negative consequences. We talk about irrationality, as long as the person is aware of the implications of it, and yet continues to perpetuate said action.
Its causes
The habit of postponing our activities has a lot to do with repairing mood in the short term while our mind is torn between duty and want, momentary and long-term gratification, thus avoiding those emotions that may become difficult.
Thus, people end up trapped in this irrational cycle of chronic procrastination, making procrastination a way of life, causing a feeling of chaos and frustration due to the accumulation of pending tasks.
Now, procrastination should not be understood as a character defect or a mysterious spell that has fallen on our ability to organize time, but rather as an inability to regulate negative moods around a task: anxiety, insecurity, boredom, frustration, resentment and more.
There are people who are specialists in procrastinating, behaving like this continuously because, in some way, they believe that tomorrow will be more appropriate to carry out the pending activities. However, the temporary relief we feel when we procrastinate is what ends up leading to an even more vicious circle Procrastination should not be understood as a sporadic behavior, but rather a circle, which easily ends up leading to a chronic habit and an increase in anguish and stress, increasing procrastination and therefore, discomfort.
To do?
Unfortunately, We can’t just tell ourselves to stop doing it And despite the abundance of “optimism and organization tips,” which focus on how to “solve” work, they do not address the root cause of it.
Self-awareness is a key aspect to understanding why procrastinating makes us feel bad. When we procrastinate, we are not only aware that we are avoiding the task at hand, but also that doing so is probably a bad idea. And yet, we do it anyway.
At this point, the essential thing is to understand that Procrastination is a matter of emotions, not laziness The solution does not simply lie in downloading applications that tell us how to make better use of time, but it involves being able to face our emotions in a different way.
To reconfigure any habit, we have to be able to give our brain a precious reward, find what is truly valuable behind those actions, visualizing the long-term goal and the benefit of it to be able to better deal with those emotions that may be challenging and complicated.
Surely we have been in this trap many times, remembering situations in which we have overcome this difficulty may possibly be of great help to us. Many times people wait to be motivated to act, waiting to be touched by a “motivational ray.” Meanwhile, experience shows us that Motivation increases when you begin to do what is necessary to achieve something that is truly important for us.
In short, changing habits is within everyone’s reach. To do this we need two fundamental ingredients: choose a change that is consistent with our scale of values, and sustain it, despite various inclemencies, until finally turning it into a sustained habit.
