When a person has some activities he doesn’t really like, it causes various problems, from lowering the quality of what he does to distracting from the activity. When you’re distracted for a considerable span of time, it’s called procrastination the most often. What does this term suggest, and how do we deal with it to avoid negative consequences? Some ideas and tips suggested by Virtue map can help you clarify the issue.
Procrastination as a process
Usually, people perceive procrastination as being lazy and wasting time on something insignificant instead of doing their job. But in fact, it’s much more complex than most people could think.
The main problem is procrastination comes not only from what a person likes or dislikes but mostly from thinking patterns that determine his behavior. It’s related to how a person sees himself in the world, society, collective, or in comparison with another person. It can also come from his self-esteem, mental problems, and other psychological reasons that lie deeper than we think.
So even if a process of procrastination shows a person as passive, lazy, disrespectful, or irresponsible, in most cases, these impressions are false. If you meet such a person and have such an impression, try to clarify the underlying reasons.
Signs that indicate you’re distracted from your primary activities
For those, who find themselves procrastinating at the end of a working day and discovering they did nothing significant during the last five hours, it can be problematic to notice when they pass from work to procrastination.
Some points and thoughts can be the triggers, so when you notice them, you can timely react to what you do:
- thoughts of the sort “it can wait” – if it’s planned, and you’ve got nothing more urgent, it can not;
- smoking, making tea, having a snack, or other short actions – if you go to do something like this every 10-15 minutes, pay attention that you’re about to fall into procrastination;
- sticking to your phone for no reason – if you’re not responding to business e-mails or messages and not doing other work tasks through the phone, there’s no reason to take it;
- planning the hypothetical scenario of “if I postpone it to the next hour/day/week/etc., I can…” – again, keep up with your plan if you have one.
As you catch yourself at something like this, you’re most likely to start procrastinating in 1 to 10 mins.
Tips on how to eliminate procrastination efficiently
To avoid procrastination, you can follow some simple tips:
- have a plan;
- put tasks in order by priorities;
- watch the time – the best is 3:1 proportion (45 mins work, 15 mins rest);
- use smartphone-restricting apps (that motivate you to use it less);
- have a tidy working space – it’s easier to concentrate.
Or use a dedicated tool if you cannot beat procrastination by yourself.
The problem of delaying can be sneaky, and the sooner you reveal it the better. To get the best result, use apps that are the most comfortable for you. One of them can be Virtuemap – an app designed to get rid of procrastination through an individual approach.
