7 Tips to Overcoming Procrastination

Overcoming Procrastination

Basically if you have enough motivation to do a task you will have few problems with procrastination, now with that being said let’s look a little closer at some tips to overcoming procrastination in your life.

What is procrastination?

Procrastination is a pervasive self-regulatory failure. Well-defined as the voluntarily delay of an intended course of action despite being worse off as a result of that delay. At least 75% of people procrastinate.

It has negative impacts on performance and has also been linked with mental health issues, increased stress, worry, and guilt. More people are putting off seeking help and often exacerbating the illness.

Procrastination has been long regarded as a negative self-handicapping or even dysfunctional behavior, however in a 2010 study established two different types of ‘procrastinators’: passive procrastinators’ and active procrastinators – when compared they had some interesting results.

Passive Procrastinators

Passive Procrastinators are where you are struck by indecisiveness; this tends to be ruled by negative outcomes and is unfortunately the more common type of procrastination.

Active Procrastinators

However Active Procrastinators takes it form as being more positive. People who like to work under pressure make deliberate decisions to put things off – to procrastinate. These people will achieve similar results to those who do not procrastinate.

So then how to we overcome procrastination? If you increase the motivation you will reduce the procrastination.

• Increase your expectancy of success – the more ‘wins’ someone has the higher the success expectancy will be.
• Increase the task’s value – the more we like doing something the more likely we will to continue with it. Make the task more enjoyable.
• Decrease your impulsiveness – the longer the period of time is between a task and its reward the more likely you would be to delay or procrastinate.

Thankfully all hope for us ‘Procrastinators’ is not lost. Research has shown multiple methods for successfully overcoming procrastination. Being more optimistic more positive studies have shown successful techniques including ‘‘Success Spirals’, ‘Vicarious Victories’ and ‘Mental Contrasting’

So what does that really mean?

Optimism

Success Spirals – Kind of how it sounds, basically achieving or having success one goal after another leading to increased confidence in your ability to succeed. So setting a number of significant and attainable goals.

Vicarious Victories – This is more about fostering optimism or positivity, the more we are around it, view, or hear it can be a real boost. However there is a thing called ‘too much optimism’ as well which can lead to delaying or putting things off. This one’s about finding the right balance.

Mental Contrasting – Used in conjunction with ‘creative visualization’ mental contrasting can be a very power too in overcoming procrastination. First you would create vivid imagery of what you wish to achieve and then secondly contrast that with where are what you have now. This is about where you are now and what obstacles you need to overcome to achieve or reach your goals.

Increasing the Value

So how can we get excited about a task that is simply boring or of little value to us, on the plus side you have some control on what value you place on tasks.

Flow – If the task is simply too boring attempt to make it more complicated.

Meaning – Make the task meaningful; connect it to something you care about.

Energy – take care to be alert before you tackle a task

Rewards – Basically give yourself a little bribe for completing a task or group a tasks

Avoiding Impulsiveness

Make a Commitment – Whether you do some self-talking ‘yes I’m going to do it’ or out loud studies have shown a decrease in procrastination with this simple technique. Moreover committing yourself to completing a task in front of or to another person has an even more powerful outcome

Set Goals – Make sure the goals you set are realistic, if at all possible mix smaller goal times say 5mins amongst longer task duration eg 30 minutes

Some days you may need a little more motivation to stave off procrastination unless you are one of those people who tend to thrive under the pressure of leaving it to the very last minute…I’m definitely the former I tend to use all sorts of tricks to keep me moving in the right direction and keeping on top of my tasks.