7 Habits to Help You Beat Procrastination

Procrastination hits at the most inopportune times and halts progress, makes us miss deadlines and causes overwhelm. There are a myriad of reasons for procrastination and in order to help push past its potential downward spiral, you need to understand the reasons you procrastinate. Once you understand the reasons behind your procrastination, you can take steps to alleviate and eliminate it, so you can move forward. Procrastination can be a threat to your professional productivity and your livelihood. Why do you procrastinate? There are many who believe procrastination is a time management issue, but it’s not – it’s an emotional issue. When you delve into the emotional reasons you procrastinate you can move past it. Here are five reasons people procrastinate: 1. You’re not sure the project is worth the perceived effort you need to put in. If you’re not invested in the task you can tell yourself “it’s not worth it.” You may be right, but you need to determine how missing this deadline could impact your future self and business. 2. You fear failure. This is a major reason for procrastination – if you don’t start, you can’t fail. Your fear keeps you frozen. Lack of training or knowledge of the overall project could add to that fear. 3. You are already overextended, but still you said “yes” to a new project. If you are already overwhelmed, and you add another project, procrastination is almost sure to follow. 4. Your perfectionist tendencies rise up. If you’re concerned that your efforts won’t yield 100% satisfaction, you are afraid to start. The desire to produce a perfect project helps assure you don’t work on it. 5. Your time management skills are lacking. If you procrastinate because you are overwhelmed, it could be because you truly do have too many tasks on your plate. However, you could be procrastinating because you don’t know how to properly manage your time and your tasks. Additionally, if you haven’t written down all of the tasks you need to do, you could be imaging you