Rakib Bepary

Why You Procrastinate

Procrastination means being lazy. When we procrastinate then for time being we relax, but most likely when the deadlines are drawing near we have to head down to working for really long times. It might sound cool in the short run but when we consider the long term, it really puts us in trouble. According to Billgates, “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it”. It means procrastination is not very negative just like the sun always comes after dark. (Steel, 2007).

Procrastination is the tool for being forced to work hard. Those in favor are the ones who procrastinate; unlike the ones who do not procrastinate, they disagree. If you mostly procrastinate, then you might be used to meeting the deadlines. These are the people who even tend to perform their task at the last minute with the reason that they want to relax all day alone. Mostly those who procrastinate live a stressful life. It is so because our tasks are not completely dependent on ourselves, rather some external factors also play their part regarding the completion of a certain task.

 

 

Procrastination is something that you do even though you know you are not supposed to do it. In the article Why you procrastinate ( It Has Nothing to Do With self-control) by Charlotte Lieberman says that procrastination has nothing to do with self-control, but it has something to do with your emotions. In that article, she explained procrastination is bad for us. We procrastinate because of our negative moods. She also showed some of the ways we can stop procrastinating. By reading that article I think procrastination can happen because of our bad moods, it can be harmful to us, but there are ways to stop procrastinating.

We procrastinate because of our negative moods. In the article Lieberman say that ” people engage in this irrational cycle of chronic procrastination because of an inability to manage negative moods around a task.” In other words when we have a bad mood and we try to do something bad even though we know it’s a bad thing to do. For example, one day I had a little verbal fight with one of my good friends. I was mad that day. But on that day, I had to finish my first draft of PBAT, but I did not do it and I was avoiding it to do later because I was in a bad mood. So over here I procrastinate because I was mad at my friend and I did not do the work that I am supposed to do.

Procrastination can be harmful to us. In the article Lieberman quotes from Dr. Hershfield’s that ” When we procrastinate, parts of our brains actually think that the task we are putting off and the accompanying negative feelings that is on the other side is somebody else’s problem. To make things worse, we are even less able to make thoughtful, future-oriented decisions in the midst of stress.” This means that if we procrastinate because of stress then in the future if we have a little bit of stress we will procrastinate. Then if it goes on like this we will procrastinate more and more, as a result, our self-discipline will be gone and when we procrastinate, we will not even realize that we are procrastinating. For example, when I first went to high school, I used to do all my homework. But one day I was not in a mood to do the homework. So, I did not do the homework and I know that it is not the best thing to do but it felt good. Then the next day I did not do my homework again and I thought I will do it later and I kept avoiding my homework like this and now I am not even realizing that I am procrastinating. Then in that semester, I got a bad grade. So over here procrastination was harmful to me.

Procrastination is harmful to us but there are some ways to stop it. Self-realization is the key to success. We can never achieve success if we do not concentrate on ourselves, our weaknesses, our psyche, etc. You need to dig deep and figure out that why do you procrastinate. You need to find out the procedure of coming out of it, which is only possible if you understand the root cause of the problem. No one else can know our thoughts well than us. Therefore, the liability falls on our shoulders if we cannot help to avoid procrastination. Coming to the main point, I rather agree that WE procrastinate, so WE have to look at the phenomena causing that. (Knaus, W J, 2016)

The tool of time management and positive reinforcement works really well. We need to ensure that we are not looking at things in terms of their duration; rather we are looking at the reward part after we finish that task. If we take panic by thinking negatively, the result is simply chaos and we procrastinate as a result. In addition, we can put in a focus that breaking down the big tasks into relatively small parts is a good idea as it boosts our confidence and helps us realize that yes we can do it. This can be one effective tool for avoiding procrastination.

 

 

To stop procrastination, we have learned healthier ways to manage the feelings that typically trigger procrastination. In the article, Lieberman mentioned that if you break up your task and consider the next action it can help you stop procrastinating. In other words, when you have a task to finish don’t wait for your mood to get fixed just break up the task and get started then your mood will be fixed and you will get motivated to finish the task. For example, right now I didn’t want to write this essay because I had a bad mood I did not know what to write but when I started writing, I was motivated to finish it and now I am almost done.

In the end, I want to say that this article taught me about procrastination. It taught me procrastination is bad for us and how to stop. By reading this article in the future I will know how to deal with procrastination.