Why do I procrastinate?

Why do I procrastinate?

By: PJ McClure

“Grrrr! I can’t believe I’ve only got 24 hours to get this done!”  lamented Bonnie to the rest of our team. “It seems like everything is hitting me at once.”

During my MBA program, every class had a team project that represented 30% of our individual grade. If you are going to get anything done in business, you have to learn to work in groups. I understood the rationale behind the team assignments, but it didn’t make it any easier to handle when someone else dropped the ball.

My teammate Jeff felt the same, “Bonnie, the rest of us had our parts together two weeks ago. Why didn’t you let us know back then that you were behind? We could have picked up the slack and helped.”

“I don’t know. I just figured I would have time to get it done. The bottom line is I’m just a procrastinator.”

Frustration reaches a critical point when we have something we want to do, there’s nothing in our way, and we still don’t do it. Every time you look at the task, you get a little sick to your stomach. We tell ourselves that we “should” do it and might even convince ourselves that we “need” to do it… but don’t.

So instead, we beat ourselves up and accept the label, procrastinator.

The root word of procrastinate is from the Latin, crastinium, meaning tomorrow. So procrastinate means, in favor of tomorrow.

 “I could do it today, but I’m in favor of doing it tomorrow.” It’s easy to see how the word came to mean, “delay.” That’s the point I want to start with. Procrastinate means to delay or put off action. It is the act of deferment or postponement, not the reason.

When a baseball game doesn’t start on time, they say it is postponed. The reason might be rain or lightning. The point is, there is an underlying reason for postponement. It’s the result of something else. When the something else is handled, the postponement goes away.

In the same way, procrastination is a result of an underlying cause. It is a symptom, not the disease. So why are bookstore shelves full of guides that address procrastination like it is the disease? Instead of trying to force our way through the symptoms, how about we address what’s wrong?

We could take a room of 100 people that are putting something off and drill down to find out what is actually keeping them from moving. Once we’ve reached the core of their individual issue, it is often different from everyone else. In the hundreds of people I’ve worked with that considered themselves procrastinators, all of them had unrealized, underlying reasons for avoiding the action.

Once we brought the real reason into the light, they were able to address it directly and the procrastination disappeared. You have that same opportunity. Over the years, I have seen every Element of Personal Choice be the root cause of procrastination. Let’s start at the top and see what rings a bell for you.

Awareness is maybe the easiest to fix. People go unconscious in their pursuit of a goal and simply do not realize they are delaying actions. This is the easiest to fix because as soon as you are aware that you’re not taking action, you can.

By making a regular check-in part of your process, you make awareness easier to maintain. The check-in can also help you identify which of the other Elements is causing the delay.

Vision is just as simple to fix, but requires a little more work. How can a lack of vision cause procrastination? If you are unsure of where you are going, you are less likely to make a move. Having a clear vision of your goal attained assures your moves are going to pay off.

Purpose brings additional assurance to your vision. Knowing which steps to take is incredibly useful, but knowing why you are taking them changes the entire landscape. With purpose, we can evaluate an unsure step. “This action is in the direction of my vision, but does it also align with my purpose?” Double reinforcement for added incentive.

Forgiveness is a sneaky cause of procrastination. Most of the forgiveness issues we hold onto do their work out of sight. We collaborate with the resentment or guilt for an internal dialogue that distracts us from the task or obstructs our vision from what is really happening.

By identifying and releasing the issues, we have a fog-lifting type of experience. We see things as they are and refocus our attention to what needs completion instead of clouding our thoughts with things already passed.

Belief, or a lack of it, can make cowards of us all. Is the reason you’re delaying because you really don’t believe you can do it? Are you experiencing fear because you think the job at hand is beyond you?

If yes, take a step back. Find an intermediate step in between where you are and where you want to be. Something you can believe in. Make your first step toward the more believable goal and you’ll be closer to the big goal by default.

Action seems obvious since actions are what we delay. The aspect of action I’m referring to though is making sure you’re taking the right ones. We can fake ourselves into thinking we are taking action.

Passionate, detailed discussions about what we are going to do give our brains the same rush as when we actually do what were discussing. All of this blabbing gives us an energy release and we feel accomplished. Stay quiet and release your energy through results.

We can also stay busy doing things around the task, but not what actually needs to be done. Are the actions you are taking making a material difference? Does each movement bring you closer to completion?

Gratitude brings a unique flavor to the party. I never thought of a lack of gratitude causing delay, but it happens more frequently than the rest. If we don’t appreciate our current environment or an aspect of our life, which is attached to the task, we tend to delay.

Why bother putting effort toward something we don’t really care about? Through our apathy, we lose our drive to make things happen. When we heighten our awareness to the good in our lives, we find a new willingness to move forward.

Above all else, don’t accept your tendency to delay on face value. Take the time and courage to look below the surface. Bonnie did and realized she lacked belief in her ability. With a little help from her friends, she redirected her focus to a more manageable piece of the assignment and her confidence grew as a result.

Within a few hours, her level of belief grew to encompass the complete assignment and she breezed through without an issue. Now she has a tool in her kit that can help her for life. So do you.

PJ McClure is the world’s foremost authority on mindset and how to build the one you want. He has touched more than 300,000 people in 56 countries with his message of possibility and power. His work in the area of goal setting is just one way he is transforming lives. Get a copy of his Goals Guide for free by going to http://themindsetmaven.com/arcgoals