Conquering Procrastination

By life coach Joshua Howard

TWO similar questions many people often ask me are "Why do I procrastinate?" or "Why can't I stop procrastinating?"

The answer is far simpler and far more complex than you may think at first - it sounds counter-intuitive, but you procrastinate in order to get something.

Pic courtesy of brainyquote.com

This something is usually a major emotional benefit like avoiding pain, failure, rejection.

Luckily though, you can figure out why you do something and get a better idea of your real motivation.

Psychologists call this a secondary benefit. So, to figure out why you procrastinate, ask yourself what you get out of it.

What is the point of procrastinating for you? What good does it do you to put your projects off? Do you enjoy the stress of impending deadlines? Do you fear imperfection?

Many people waste time by focusing on perfection. However, perfection is an illusion (particularly if you've never done something before..... how do you even know what 'perfect' is?!?).

If you have this problem, focus on 'good enough'. Create the item 'good enough' and then begin to tweak it if necessary.

More often than not, perfectionism is a veiled form of procrastination, wherein people try to make things perfect in order to never get rejected.

But face facts: when you deal with others, you're going to get rejected by some of them - and that's GOOD!

What? Yes, contrary to popular opinion, you want to be rejected. Why?

So that people who don't like you go away quickly and so that if you're being rejected by everyone, you can use the data to figure out why people are rejecting you.

Another major reason people procrastination is that they fear failure because they equate failure with pain.

And while it's true that it's a little jarring to fail, failure is not a painful experience at all. If anything it's a calibration.

Far too many people get caught up in this idea that you can try for a goal and then succeed or fail.

However, it doesn't work like that. There is no 'either/or' in the world unless failure at your goal means death.

But since you're probably not trying to do something like jump the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle, you'll probably be fine.

So, rather than think about the possibility of pain from failure, consider that trying is a way to get one step closer to your goal by learning a way that either works or doesn't.....

..... both of which are good sources of information.

By the way, would you like to learn more about productivity, change, and time management? If so, download my free ebook "How to Manage Your Life and Time".

(And I'll let you in on a big hint: productivity has very little to do with time management strategies and everything to do with how you conceive of and use your time every moment of every day... )

Joshua Howard is life coach who specializes in law of attraction, NLP, and DHE.

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