Procrastination affects us all, but what can you do to avoid it, and how can you get your life back on track?
11:55 PM. You have an assignment due within a matter of moments. And yet, your fingers are scrambling across a creaking keyboard, desperate to get anything down. Because you started five minutes ago. Procrastination affects all of us (me included, hard to believe, I know), and it can make the simplest task, getting out of bed, seem wholly insurmountable. I mean, just typing this paragraph took me three weeks.
Let’s look at the whys, the how to avoid, and the outlook for your battle with the ignoble foe of procrastination, and maybe get a little closer to finally starting that essay. The clock’s always ticking, after all.
In the United States, 20-25% of adults worldwide are considered chronic procrastinators (crazy, but evidently true). There’s a whole host of causes for procrastination, but let’s just look at a couple.
Causes
ADHD
A classic culprit. We’ve all heard of ‘ADHD’ paralysis, and sufferers of the condition often have low dopamine-driven motivation, executive paralysis, and other general motivation issues. As a result, individuals with the condition tend to procrastinate more frequently than those without it.
Depression
Some days, it’s hard to get out of bed. Or make breakfast. Or do just about anything.
When you suffer from depression, any task can seem daunting, and it can be quite difficult to accomplish anything whatsoever. The more you procrastinate, the worse your stress becomes, and the less likely you are to actually begin the task that you’ve deemed unpleasant.
Distractions
They’re just so easy to come by. TikTok, Instagram (Facebook? Nah, probably not), and a whole host of other platforms that exist to provide brief bouts of stimulation and lock you into a loop of inactivity. Without properly understanding what is distracting you, it’s quite difficult to actually make any changes.
Solutions (or at least things to consider)
When you procrastinate, why exactly do you feel trapped? Are you being sucked into your phone for hours on end? Are you dreading an assignment, dodging a deadline, or avoiding something that you’d just rather not do? Why don’t you want to do the thing you don’t want to do?
Check your screen time
Consider setting limits on particular apps that are sucking hours of your life away every day. Two hours of Instagram a day? 14 hours a week, 730 a year, and over 30 days of your life gone. Gone.
If you can mitigate the smaller time-wasters (a fifteen-minute TikTok scroll, a little YouTube marathon, whatever it may be), the rest will follow. But I urge that you at least consider limiting your app usage manually within your phone’s settings.
Little rewards (and a checklist too!)
Can you read 40 pages in a night? Maybe, maybe not, but you know what you can do? Read 8 pages 5 times throughout the night. Read a little, do some math, take a walk, or take a break, and come back to it. You’ll find that when you remove yourself from an activity (especially an unpleasant one), it’s possible to re-enter the task with a renewed sense of purpose.
Maybe get a physical planner and plot out your exact course of action every night. Let’s try an example.
3 PM: Arrive at home
3:05 PM: Begin reading The Great Gatsby
3:25 PM: Take a five-minute break
3:30 PM: Start math homework
Et cetra.
Give it a chance, and if it works for you, that’s phenomenal. If not, try to consider task prioritization, at least to some extent, and go with the flow so you can complete your tasks in a streamlined, efficient manner.
To ensure you get the right tasks completed, ask yourself, “What will happen if I don’t get this done? Is it more vital than this?” Make sure that the task at hand is always the task with the most dire implications, should it not get completed on time.
If you don’t do what’s important, then what’s the point of doing smaller, less pressing tasks?
Try it ‘cold turkey.’
In my quest to find tools to allow myself to mitigate procrastination, I came upon the Cold Turkey app. There are many products like it, but the general gist of it is simply to prevent you from even being sucked in by distractions.
You can select various apps and programs that will not be able to send you those honey-covered notifications that have a tendency to tear you away from your productivity. Without distractions in the form of various notifications, it is far, far easier to stay your course and complete your tasks on time.
Just a thought. It’s a one-time purchase, and I’m sure you can find a host of similar products if you scour the web for a few minutes.
Don’t blame yourself
One of the biggest issues I’ve personally grappled with regarding procrastination is the feeling of inadequacy that creeps in once you realize that you’ve wasted an hour doing quite literally nothing.
But it simply isn’t productive to sit there and hate yourself. It really isn’t. What you should do is approach little mistakes with compassion and patience.
If you find yourself wasting time, that’s okay. Everyone makes little mistakes, and not punishing yourself for insubstantial mistakes can allow you to get right back on track, without feeling like a failure.
Because you’re not a failure. If you’re reading this article (even if you’re doing it instead of your homework), I want you to know that you are capable of accomplishing anything, as long as you take it step by step.
Take the setbacks in stride, and always remember that you’ll feel better about yesterday’s mistakes tomorrow. Keep moving forward and working to your best capacity.
That’s all you can do.
