Procrastanation! What's that in simple terms?

Goals have been set, plans have been prepared, and a working atmosphere has been created. It would seem that it's time to get down to business. But, wait a minute, here's a message from friends, suddenly I want to finish reading a book that has long been forgotten, and you are distracted by the good weather outside. And we start putting it off. After all, nothing will happen if we do something else for a couple minutes.

And then another couple minutes and then another - and that is the way to the burning deadline. This is how procrastination occurs in our lives.

Many equate it with laziness, but there is a certain difference. In psychology, there is an opinion that procrastination is a person's tendency to constantly postpone important things, which leads to personal dissatisfaction and can even cause depression and other health problems. Idleness doesn't make our brain feel guilty about an unfulfilled task. Many of us can sometimes indulge laziness and this is quite normal. But joining the ranks of procrastinators, we risk not only with our own reputation, but also with our health. We also fall into time traps.

Not to postpone important things for later, we recommend to time management tools that will discipline us and clearly track what we spend our time on. Checkiant time tracker is designed for easy and unobtrusive tracking of work and spare time. After all, who said that we should not organize our holidays, sports, self-education, нobbies, etc.?

Why do we become procrastinators

By delaying tasks until the last moment, we lose the main and most valuable resource of our life — time. As a result, both the quality of implementation and the achievement of goals deteriorate. Many procrastinators use phrases like: “the closer the deadline, the more active the brain becomes”, “doing everything at the last moment, you get more adrenaline and work better”. Perhaps this makes some sense, but at the same time, productivity becouse of this kind of attitude to work falls. In addition, tasks are performed in a hurry, without the right to error and the ability to correct or improve the components of the project. Then why do we have an overwhelming desire to do anything but work, and when exactly do we turn into procrastinators? There are different reasons for procrastination in our lives:

Decision paralysis. Having a huge number of options for solving a particular problem, we are often unable to choose one and start acting. Our brain simply refuses to make a choice, because it is impossible to say with certainty that this decision will be the right one. Afterwards, we delay and waste time again.
Lack of understanding of the final result. It would seem that without certain options for the development of a particular project, it is possible to move in any direction. But, in this case, the movement towards the goal is either significantly slowed down, or it stops at all. After all, if it is not clear what do you need to do, so why do you have to do something anything at all? As a result, we are back to procrastination.
The wrong priorities. When we receive any task, we decide whether it's important or not. When priorities are incorrectly set, we often postpone more complex tasks, that are important for achieving the goal.

In addition, there are a number of other reasons why we procrastinate: emotional stress, lack of motivation and inability to own your time.

Studies of procrastination

For the first time, procrastination was discussed by ancient philosophers. They all understood that by delaying, we are missing our own lives. In our time, it is not enough to talk about the problem. Therefore, scientists began to study the topic of procrastination. The term "procrastination” first appeared in 1977 in the book “Procrastination in human life” by P. Ringenbach. Today, many psychologists are trying to find logical explanations for the causes of procrastination and ways to overcome it. For example, psychologists at Carleton University T. Pichel and F. Sirois believe that procrastination is a problem more of an emotional nature than the inability to manage your time. А postponed task causes negative emotions, and procrastinating, we are looking for a way to get rid of them.

Author of the book "Defeat procrastination! How to stop putting things off for tomorrow" P. Ludwig, for 10 years has been studying procrastination and the methods to fight it. In his book, he describes effective tools and techniques that allow you to not only get rid of the habit of procrastination, but also to engage in personal growth. Ludwig describes the most important methods of dealing with procrastination:

Motivation
Self-discipline
Objectivity
Results

By developing these skills, you will be able to overcome procrastination, - says the author.

Who is more likely to occur procrastination

Putting things off is familiar to everyone. It is believed that emotional people and those who are constantly stressed are more likely to suffer from procrastination. At the same time, there is a procrastination scale by which you can easily determine whether you are a procrastinator or not. It consists of 20 easy questions and a 5-point answer system. This system was developed for students because of the big workload. But this scale is perfect for each of us.

The impact of procrastination on our lives

When we waste time because of procrastination, we let our life run its course. After all, every hour spent in vain pushes us away from our goal. Because of this, we do not get the proper pleasure and risk falling into depression. There are various ways to avoid this. One of them is proper time planning using the Chekiant time tracker.