Welcome to my blog

Congratulations and welcome to friends, family and others who have found something of interest in my blog. The reason that I have created this blog is to share some of my experiences regarding my own journey of writing and publishing my autobiography. I am really excited and motivated about this whole process. I hope that what I write about is interesting to you and thank you for your encouragement and support.





Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Procrastination

How many of you are guilty of procrastinating?  How many of you even know what the word procrastination means?  The one thing that I do know is that we are all guilty of it. 

Now, my previous post was about "Setting goals for 2011".  How did you all go with that?  I bet you’ve got them all written out and up on the fridge door or in a neat little folder that you read every night just before you go to sleep.  Mmmmmm I thought not!

Now perhaps the reason you are “putting this off” is because you are procrastinating.   Procrastination is when you just avoid doing stuff that you really know you should be doing and you just can’t seem to figure out why you don’t just do it!  

I decided to write about procrastination today, because I have recently been procrastinating over “writing my book” and I am feeling really frustrated with myself and I thought that a blog about procrastination would help me work through some of my procrastination issues.  I know that this is actually another ploy to procrastinate further, but as long as I am aware of that then that’s a good start in overcoming it.

There are a million things that we all put off and they all range in level of importance.  Some are big things and some might be small things, in other words some things we put off are either important or not so important. 

Now often we feel guilty if we don’t achieve or at least have a go at completing these things.  But why do we feel guilty?  Is it because we are letting ourselves down? Or perhaps it’s because we think we are letting someone else down or could it be both reasons?  Only you know the answers to those questions.  So they are worth contemplating.

Often the closer something gets to the last minute is when I seem to procrastinate the most.  It’s like I can’t function unless I am under pressure.  Yet I tell myself that I hate putting myself under pressure.  It seems like a vicious cycle and it is!  So why do I do it?  Why do any of us do it to ourselves?

This is also a question that only you can answer, but some possible reasons for this are;

1.    We are scared and we fear failure or fear success.
2.    We are punishing ourselves.
3.    We are punishing others. 
4.    We fear change.
    So, now that you know some of the possible reasons why you put things off, what can you do about it?  What can you do to overcome procrastinating habits?

    If you do something long enough it will become a habit or a pattern of behaviour, whether it is good or bad.  To turn a negative pattern or habit into a positive habit or behaviour does take some serious attention and most of all action.   Despite being challenging, it can be done as long as you are persistent!

    Follow these steps!

    Step 1 – Become aware of your procrastinating habit

    Step 2 – Identify why you are or are not doing what you’re supposed to be doing.  Is it fear of success or fear of failure?  Ask who am I hurting?

    Step 3 – Remember that action overcomes procrastination.  (Do 1 small thing towards achieving your task or goal - put a time limit on it too)

    Step 4 – Reward yourself for moving forward. 

    Step 5 - Repeat Step 3, continuously until the job is done!

    I found this count down timer tool on the internet and thought that you might also find it valuable to monitor your time and help you stay on track with your tasks.


    Best of luck with overcoming procrastination and until next time!  Enjoy!

    No comments:

    Post a Comment