I don’t know how many times I have thought about sitting down and writing about the subject of procrastination just to find myself putting it off again and again. Trust me, the irony is not lost on me! This seems to be one of my biggest problems in life and the thing that really keeps me from accomplishing the things that are really important to me. It is amazing how many other things I can suddenly think of doing instead of just getting down to the task at hand.

Now, my procrastination doesn’t apply to everything and it doesn’t come into play when other people are relying on me. If people are depending on me and have expectations of me I never leave things lying about. I hate the thought of anyone thinking I am a slacker. My procrastination comes into play in regards to my own hopes and dreams. I have all kinds of projects and things dreamed up and most of them just stay dreams and never even get past the planning stages. Lately things have gotten so bad I practically need to plan several days ahead of time just to get the garbage taken out.

Am I Just Lazy???

For the longest time I thought that maybe I am just terribly lazy but I know that that just isn’t the case. I decided I had better take a closer look at myself and really get to the root cause of this.
I think my biggest problem is that when I plan to do something I think very big and then I have this huge daunting task before me and the details and planning involved in making it a success totally overwhelm me. I also assume that I can do much more than I actually can so when I am unable to really accomplish what I had planned in the unrealistic timeframe that I gave myself, I get annoyed and frustrated and throw the whole thing by the wayside.

It Must Be Perfect!

The main reason behind my procrastination and one of the most common reasons why anybody procrastinates is actually not laziness but perfectionism. I am obsessed with doing things perfectly and I can’t tolerate it if things don’t live up to my own expectations. I am also positive that if I have flaws and errors in my work then everyone else is sure to notice them too and that thought is actually pretty terrifying to me. The amount of effort that goes into something that I have planned to make it live up to my own expectations is usually more than I can commit to so the whole thing gets scrapped or postponed until I find the “perfect moment” which I notice usually never comes.

I have been getting really tired of this lately because I am depriving myself of the right to success and the right to achieve the things that I really want in life. I am delegating myself to a life of mediocrity by not even attempting to get some of my plans realized.

I bought some books recently at the bookstore and I thought they were pretty helpful in understanding some of the underlying problems of procrastination and how to overcome it.

Two of the tools I was reading about and am trying to implement are how to break tasks down into bite size manageable pieces and how to gradually increase my workload over time to avoid feeling overwhelmed. The book comes complete with worksheets and exercises to really help breakdown ineffective patterns of behavior and teach how to implement new patterns so I can actually get the things done that I want to accomplish and finally overcome procrastination.

Check out the books I mentioned and other related titles at Amazon.