The irony of multitasking and the fever called procrastination

Recently I was watching an interview of a young man who talked about procrastination. It was a short but very interesting presentation. I also happened to have a conversation with my best friend in which he told me that – You just have to start to do it, and by doing, everything else will fall in place, don’t wait cause the time that you waist waiting and doubting; you will never get it back-. This made me realize that my biggest problem so far hasn’t been the lack of time, money or means; but the big fever called procrastination. Most people suffer from it from time to time but for an artist or anyone who wants to achieve something in his life, procrastination can be the difference between reaching your goals or not.

I believe that the only way to be able to understand and help others is by starting with yourself. So right now I am learning about people but more precisely about myself. I have been studying my behaviors; the good things about it and the little things that I have to change. So today I am going to tell you something about this little fever called procrastination and how we use multitasking to hide it.

First of all you need to know that procrastination is the habit of postponing what you have to do to a later period of time, so that you don’t have to face it right away.

Reasons for this behavior can be:

1. The fear of failing; cause if you do it right away you will know if you done it right or not. This is often the case for perfectionists because they fear failure.
2. The lack of self-confidence; which makes you doubt constantly about yourself and your abilities. It makes you believe that you are not worth it; therefor you postpone it so that you don’t have to face your doubts at that moment.
3. Or that the project or whatever you are trying achieve is too overwhelming and you don’t know where to start.

The way I procrastinate is by making myself way too busy. Yes, I found out that multitasking is a wonderful way to procrastinate.  You just make sure that you have lots of things to do at the same time so that you always have the excuse that you are not available to actually start or finish the main task that really matters.

So if you think closely you will be able to find out for yourself a great example of when you had to do a big task and that you perfectly applied the rules of procrastination.

So now that you know what procrastination is, you must know that this is a real goals-killer. If you are trying to achieve something in your life, work, relationships or any other field, procrastination is a fever that you need to get rid of. Procrastination or multitasking waists creativity and time, energy and courage and these are the ingredients you actually need to be able to achieve anything.

So how can we fight this –oh so common weakness-?

The first and most effective way to fight procrastination is by planning. Write out what you have to achieve in a year, month, week or day according to the size of your project. Then break it down in parts and write down what you have to do and when you have to get each part done. Write down every little step like spending one hour a day working on your project.

Second is actually admitting to yourself that you are procrastinating. This is actually the most important thing to do. Ones you can catch yourself trying to procrastinate, well, tell yourself that you will no longer give in to that weakness and that you will get it done right away.

Last but not least work in pair, make sure that you have someone who checks your work on a particular fixed moment; like for example reporting to your publisher every week, so that you work on your project and have to report on a fixed day. If your work doesn’t require a publisher, well have a committed friend call you every week or your parents or anyone who can make the time for this.

Here is a little example of my procastination, I’ve always wanted to go on a backpacking trip for a long time but always postponed it for other trips while using all the excuses possible. Now I actually have a friend who wants to go to this backpacking trip too. Since our first talk about doing this trip together,  she already searched for the information about the trip and already booked an appointment at the travel agency. This went fast forward, while if I was alone I would probably have waited to do this by making up the best excuses.

If you are one of those who procrastinate from time to time, you need to know that procrastinating isn’t a lack of creativity or intelligence. It is just a habit that you have to outlearn, and some of us haven’t been able to do this on a early age which makes it harder to work on it now. But this is nothing that you can not overcome. So make a plan, respect it, chair it with someone who can help and make sure that when you fall into your old habit that you can recognize it on time and change that by remembering yourself how important it is to get the things done on time to reach your goals.

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