The Real Reason You Procrastinate and How to Stop.
The Simplest Solutions are Often the Best.
“Procrastination,” Christopher Parker said, “is like a credit card; it’s a lot of fun until you get the bill.” Procrastination is one of those things that we all know to avoid, yet somehow find ourselves doing regardless.
Like many of life’s frustrations, we usually know what we should do, we just don’t do it. Procrastination’s a prime example. We fully know that we should be taking on certain challenges, yet we can’t bring ourselves to do it. Instead, we focus our time and energy on other things, telling ourselves that we’ll get back to those critical efforts soon. Why? Why do we continue to act against our own best interest?
One common thought is laziness. Maybe procrastinators are just lazy bums who’d rather goof off watching YouTube than do real work. Except this tends to fall apart when you look at most procrastinators. They tend to be hard workers. And often the work they do while procrastinating is just as difficult as what they’re trying to avoid.
They‘re working hard. They’re just working on the wrong things.
Because we rarely procrastinate to avoid hard work. Instead, we procrastinate to avoid negative emotions. We procrastinate on work that’s ambiguous or in areas where we…
