Psychological causes of “procrastination disease” and ways to cope

We all postpone our work from time to time. We want to turn off the alarm in the morning and sleep for 5 minutes, or we decide to go to the sport tomorrow, not today. However, what we will talk about in this article will be the kind of procrastination that leads us. Although we briefly refer to it as procrastination, we will be talking about chronic procrastination disease. Explore overcoming procrastination.

By nature, we tend to prefer the near future award to the distant future award.

In general, we will be rewarded when we achieve goals such as financial return, enjoyment, success, entertainment, health, and self-realization. While the behaviors that provide short-term ones from these awards are activities such as watching TV series / movies, playing games, eating, spending time with friends; we can give an example of financial accumulation, doing sports or writing a thesis to the behaviors that provide long-term ones. Even if distant rewards are larger, it is challenging for them to make long-term, stable efforts and wait. Therefore, we prefer short-term awards in postponement, i.e. instant enjoyment, awards in the long term, such as health, success or assurance.

You can find yourself watching TV series instead of writing a thesis, meeting with friends instead of going to sports. Stop procrastinating!

In fact, after watching a series, you can return to the thesis you will write, or you can go to the sport after meeting your friends. However, if you are a person who delays chronically, the things that you are busy with before you start your business are doubled. For example, you clean your room all day, read a book, go on social media, go out to get air, and at the end of the day, you cannot start your business.

As the deadline of the work we do is approaching, we are increasingly uneasy from being delayed, but we may continue to delay. So why do we keep postponing despite all its illogicality?

Deferralism is actually a matter of self-discipline.

If we were able to develop a general self-discipline in life, we have less inclination to delay it while fulfilling our responsibilities. On the other hand, there is a primitive side within us. If we have not developed enough self-discipline, we hand over the rudder to our primitive side and linger.

When we act with this primitive side, instead of starting to work, we spend time with TV series / movies and social media. When the time that things can catch up is getting too low, we get into panic. In this panic, we are suddenly productive with our productive side, and maybe we are hurryingly, as much as we do. Maybe we are sleepless, and our work ends too far from our dreams. Nevertheless, it makes us comfortable to have completed this job.

Like exercising repeatedly to build muscle, we need to keep ourselves loyal to our plan over and over to develop self-discipline. Nobody can claim that this is easy. But the good news is that, as you practice, it becomes easier to maintain self-discipline, like most things.

In addition to self-discipline, perfectionism is one of the conditions associated with procrastination disease. If we are perfectionists and postponing, we are putting our primitive side in point. Since even the thought of doing things perfect is tiring, the person consumes his energy from the beginning with his “very good” design in his mind. Since we know deeply that it is difficult to do such good work, we become reluctant to do that work. And you did! Again, the rudder is turned over to that primitive side. We fill the time we will do our job with junk.

If you are a procrastinator, pay attention to exactly when you postpone the job.

It is a very critical time to do the job: when it is impossible to do it perfectly as designed, but we have enough time to grow up, albeit end to end. In fact, there is a sign that this behavior has given us, it is important to consider it. We do not want to comply with perfection. This is not possible anyway. It is useful to listen and re-weigh this sign that it is realistic to expect perfection from we and how much it works.
Another important point in chronic procrastination is the conditioning cycle.

Normally, we feel in the profits because we spend 2 hours on a job that will spend hours, and as a result we don’t lose much. If this is an exam, it may seem like getting an average result, preparing a presentation, or being able to offer something more or less, compared to the effort we put into our eyes.

However, we have to admit to ourselves: We did not get real pleasure from what we did instead of doing our job while delaying. Against the background of our minds, we continued to experience the anxiety of the work we had to do. We met with our friends, we watched the series, but we could not enjoy it fully because our mind was actually at work.

The idea that we are profitable from our work is an illusion and nurtures this behavioral cycle. When we do not look like this, our mind automatically looks at the result instead of the process and if there is a bad result there is a profit count. Therefore, we tend to postpone again in the next times. So our mind simply codifies what happened as follows: I worked less and got good results according to my work.

To break the loop, we have to look at the result, not the result.

There was an anxiety that continued to be experienced in the background during the entire period of postponement. And even if we fit the work for less than it will be, we will have a lot more mental fatigue by carrying our work in our minds at all times we postpone it.

It is also important to remember the great panic situation that occurred during the cultivation of the work in those last periods. Understanding how this cycle continues, realizing our disadvantaged situation in the process instead of automatic thinking will be important points in breaking the cycle.

In addition, time management goes hand in hand with self-discipline. The following is an important start in developing this skill: When we calculate how long a business takes, the account at home does not fit in the bazaar. While it takes 2 hours to prepare that presentation, you may realize that you have completed half of it in 2 hours. At this point, I recommend you double whatever time you have in mind. This will be a good first step if you are just at the beginning to improve time management skills.

In addition, the amount of time you will devote to work, how many minutes you work and how many minutes you take a break will also mean that you take back the rudder with awareness and intent on this primitive side mentioned above. Time management, as part of self-discipline, is a skill that becomes easier as it repeats, although difficult at first.

As a result, although the procrastination disease causes us to underperform, it ironically keeps our self-confidence high. The connection is simple, though indirect: In every job you postpone and fail to get good results, you avoid the possibility that the reason is related to you. So you continue to stick to the belief that you actually do good.

But you do this without actually giving yourself the chance to do good deeds. Therefore, the way to consolidate this self-confidence, which we maintain in a fragile way, is to give ourselves time, take the opportunity and take the scenario that we avoid.

Source: livetobloom.com