You’re probably putting off doing something right now.
It may be a chore, homework assignment or email that needs answering. But instead of getting it done, you procrastinate.
But procrastination isn’t laziness; it’s the manifestation of stress or negative thoughts about ourselves. We procrastinate because we are anxious about completing our tasks, or we believe we aren’t good enough and won’t be able to do a good job.
Procrastination can be beaten, though. It’s in our best interest to self-reflect on the root of the problem and why we are putting off accomplishing a task.
Maybe it’s the final essay for your class or an application for a scholarship, and you’re putting it off because you don’t think you’ll do a good job and are afraid of seeing a bad result.
A way to defeat this feeling and stop procrastinating is to simply start whatever you’ve been putting off and evaluate your progress as you go. Maybe it’s not coming out as bad as you thought, and maybe it’s not as hard as you thought. You’ll never know whether you are truly good or bad at doing something if you don’t try it first, and you’ll never be able to improve unless you keep doing it. So, start.
Feeling overwhelmed and daunted by the amount or size of the tasks that you need to get done can also lead to procrastination. The to-do list is too long, or the math homework has too many problems, so you freeze and do nothing instead.
Dividing up a task into smaller chunks is a great way to put in perspective how long it will take you to accomplish. You can calculate the time it takes to do an assignment if you know how long it takes to finish a quarter of it. All of a sudden, it seems doable.
Another reason we procrastinate is simply because we may hate doing the task that needs to get done. Laundry, bills or phone calls (ew) will never seem appealing, no matter how you see it.
Come up with something you feel like doing instead, like eating a snack or watching TikTok, and reward yourself with it after you finish. Give yourself a reason for being productive.
Lastly, procrastination can be tempting because of the thrill you sometimes get when accomplishing tasks at the last minute. Cleaning your apartment in the morning? Boring. Cleaning it 10 minutes before your friends come over? Exhilarating!
I used to believe that when I put off doing something until the very end, I would do a better job at it and feel more accomplished. However, a wealth of personal experience has taught me that this causes more total stress and is not always my best performance.
The value of your future self’s mental and physical health is worth the effort to beat procrastination and achieve tasks in the most efficient way possible.
Isabella Albertini is a 23-year-old mass communication junior from Lima, Peru.
