Procrastination

Hello! This is your host Erica Cuascut, and welcome to today's episode of Social Influence! Let's talk about Procrastination: The action of delaying or postponing something. It's a challenge we all face. We've all done it and we constantly tell ourselves we'll never do it again. So we come up with an elaborate time management system to get us on track only to find ourselves continuing to put things off over and over again. Why do we procrastinate? We often procrastinate because we're afraid of failing at the task that we need to complete. Fear of failure promotes procrastination when we feel incapable of dealing with a task that we're afraid to fail at. Everyone puts things off sometimes, but procrastinators avoid difficult tasks and may deliberately look for distractions. Procrastination tends to reflect a person's struggles with self-control. "I don't feel like it" I'll do it tomorrow" I'll leave it for next week" It all comes to supersede over our goals or responsibilities, and can set us on a downward spiral of negative emotions that further put off our future goals. Procrastination also involves a degree of self-deception: At some level, procrastinators are aware of their actions and the consequences, but changing their habits requires an even greater effort than completing the task. How to Beat Procrastination: It's possible to overcome procrastination but it takes considerable effort. Changing our behavior consumes a lot of energy. Start by adopting timelines that build in time for delaying, but not too much; making a personal challenge out of big tasks; breaking large jobs into achievable chunks. How can I stop putting off important decisions? Procrastinators struggle to make important decisions, in part because not making a choice absolves us of responsibility of the outcome. But sometimes we simply become so exhausted from making decisions that it seems impossible to make relatively unimportant ones. So basically sticking to a personal set of decision-making rules Procrastination, or outsourcing some decisions to a partner, friend or co-worker may help overcome decision making. We don't realize it but Procrastination is the Enemy of Success. Every single day you procrastinate is another day closer to not accomplishing your goals and dreams. Therefore never allow waiting to become a habit. Live your dreams and take risks. Life is happening now.