If you procrastinate then you need to stop procrastination problems before they have a profoundly negative effect on your life. A procrastinator often struggles because he or she puts things off. Some procrastinators find that they are procrastinating in just one area of their life, such as work, while other procrastinators find that they delay necessary tasks in all areas of their lives. Either way, procrastinating can cause problems and should be stopped. Procrastinating may be so ingrained for some people that they do not even know that they are doing it and that makes stopping difficult. However, treatment for procrastination is available and can help people quit this bad habit. Effective anti-procrastination techniques include NLP and hypnotherapy.
What is Procrastination? People procrastinate when they put off activities that could and, in many cases should, be done now. Procrastinators defer the activities until a later time. The term does not apply to people who have two equally important things to do and must pick one to do first. Rather, it applies to people that have tasks or activities with clear priorities and put off the most important task or activity needlessly for the purpose of delaying it.
Take the right action.If you've taken action before without getting long lasting results then it's very possible the action you took was not appropriate. For instance to stop procrastinating you may have gotten more organized, broken larger projects down into more manageable pieces, reasoned with and rewarded yourself, as well as tried to make unpleasant tasks more fun.Nothing wrong with the strategies mentioned if your goal was to be more productive generally, but ineffective for ending procrastination in the long term. Possibly it may have appeared as if things were improving when you took these actions, but this would have just been temporary masking of the condition. It's a bit like telling a manic depressive to go and see a funny movie as a cure. It's simply not going to do the job, just as being more organized won't stop procrastinating. I'm not suggesting procrastination is as serious as manic depression but it's not nearly as simple as being disorganized, overwhelmed or distracted either.
To be successful you have to deal with the underlying way in which procrastination works. You procrastinate because of the way you are wired biologically. Everything you do in life is driven by your desire to gain pleasure and avoid pain. You will also do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. So if you link any pain with taking action, even in order to gain pleasure, your association with the pain will stop you from taking action and you will procrastinate.To stop procrastinating there's no point in focusing on the pleasure you will get from achieving your goal instead of the pain to get there because you already know your drive to avoid pain will always win. Rather you must compare the pain you link with taking action to the pain you will feel if you don't take action.
While it might be normal for a person to procrastinate once in awhile, it becomes a problem when it starts to interfere with a person's life. It is the type of behavior that can cause a person to lose his or her job and severely impact a person's life.
Then I asked her to tell me what came to mind when she had to exercise. She told me it was hard, she hated being out of breath, was sure people were laughing at her and she didn't want to have painful muscles the next day. No wonder she couldn't stop procrastinating! Like all of us, she is wired to avoid pain first, so even though she wanted to lose weight to experience all the pleasurable benefits she had given me, skipping the exercise because of the pain she linked with it was the greater motivator. I asked her to tell me what would happen if she didn't exercise. "I'll stay fat." she said. "What will that mean?" I asked. She said she would continue to feel unattractive, her clothes would cut into her skin because they were too tight, people would snicker behind her back whenever she was out to eat and she would possibly get diabetes. I wanted her to stop procrastinating so I asked whether she would rather experience the pain linked to the exercise or the pain linked to staying fat. There was no hesitation. The pain linked to staying fat would be far worse and more permanent.
She agreed that whenever she felt tempted to skip exercise from then on she would immediately interrupt that pattern and focus her thoughts on how it would feel to stay fat versus how she would feel doing exercise. I knew if she could do this that it would cancel out the debilitating pain she linked with exercise and she would STOP PROCRASTINATING. Last I heard she was still exercising every day. If you follow the above process you too will be able to determine the right action to take to interrupt your own procrastination habit. Review your results and act.Once you have spent some time approaching your situation differently you must notice whether you are getting different results. Are you procrastinating less, maybe completely? If so you will have found a way that works to help you too and you will know what to continue doing. But what should you do if you have followed these three steps and you have still not found a way to stop procrastinating?
Firstly don't give up and you won't if it's important enough to you. Analyze where your problem may lie. Are you sure you have committed to the actions above? Do you perhaps need more information than an article this length can provide?If you're sure you have done everything possible then just accept that you need to try something else and if that doesn't work, try something else and keep going till you find a way. We are all different and what works for one person may not work for another. Don't give up. Often the simplest of actions is difficult for us to implement which is why using a tool to assist us to interrupt our negative pattern can be useful.
What is Procrastination? People procrastinate when they put off activities that could and, in many cases should, be done now. Procrastinators defer the activities until a later time. The term does not apply to people who have two equally important things to do and must pick one to do first. Rather, it applies to people that have tasks or activities with clear priorities and put off the most important task or activity needlessly for the purpose of delaying it.
Take the right action.If you've taken action before without getting long lasting results then it's very possible the action you took was not appropriate. For instance to stop procrastinating you may have gotten more organized, broken larger projects down into more manageable pieces, reasoned with and rewarded yourself, as well as tried to make unpleasant tasks more fun.Nothing wrong with the strategies mentioned if your goal was to be more productive generally, but ineffective for ending procrastination in the long term. Possibly it may have appeared as if things were improving when you took these actions, but this would have just been temporary masking of the condition. It's a bit like telling a manic depressive to go and see a funny movie as a cure. It's simply not going to do the job, just as being more organized won't stop procrastinating. I'm not suggesting procrastination is as serious as manic depression but it's not nearly as simple as being disorganized, overwhelmed or distracted either.
To be successful you have to deal with the underlying way in which procrastination works. You procrastinate because of the way you are wired biologically. Everything you do in life is driven by your desire to gain pleasure and avoid pain. You will also do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. So if you link any pain with taking action, even in order to gain pleasure, your association with the pain will stop you from taking action and you will procrastinate.To stop procrastinating there's no point in focusing on the pleasure you will get from achieving your goal instead of the pain to get there because you already know your drive to avoid pain will always win. Rather you must compare the pain you link with taking action to the pain you will feel if you don't take action.
While it might be normal for a person to procrastinate once in awhile, it becomes a problem when it starts to interfere with a person's life. It is the type of behavior that can cause a person to lose his or her job and severely impact a person's life.
Then I asked her to tell me what came to mind when she had to exercise. She told me it was hard, she hated being out of breath, was sure people were laughing at her and she didn't want to have painful muscles the next day. No wonder she couldn't stop procrastinating! Like all of us, she is wired to avoid pain first, so even though she wanted to lose weight to experience all the pleasurable benefits she had given me, skipping the exercise because of the pain she linked with it was the greater motivator. I asked her to tell me what would happen if she didn't exercise. "I'll stay fat." she said. "What will that mean?" I asked. She said she would continue to feel unattractive, her clothes would cut into her skin because they were too tight, people would snicker behind her back whenever she was out to eat and she would possibly get diabetes. I wanted her to stop procrastinating so I asked whether she would rather experience the pain linked to the exercise or the pain linked to staying fat. There was no hesitation. The pain linked to staying fat would be far worse and more permanent.
She agreed that whenever she felt tempted to skip exercise from then on she would immediately interrupt that pattern and focus her thoughts on how it would feel to stay fat versus how she would feel doing exercise. I knew if she could do this that it would cancel out the debilitating pain she linked with exercise and she would STOP PROCRASTINATING. Last I heard she was still exercising every day. If you follow the above process you too will be able to determine the right action to take to interrupt your own procrastination habit. Review your results and act.Once you have spent some time approaching your situation differently you must notice whether you are getting different results. Are you procrastinating less, maybe completely? If so you will have found a way that works to help you too and you will know what to continue doing. But what should you do if you have followed these three steps and you have still not found a way to stop procrastinating?
Firstly don't give up and you won't if it's important enough to you. Analyze where your problem may lie. Are you sure you have committed to the actions above? Do you perhaps need more information than an article this length can provide?If you're sure you have done everything possible then just accept that you need to try something else and if that doesn't work, try something else and keep going till you find a way. We are all different and what works for one person may not work for another. Don't give up. Often the simplest of actions is difficult for us to implement which is why using a tool to assist us to interrupt our negative pattern can be useful.
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