How to Stop Procrastinating!

How to stop procrastinating

How to stop procrastinating

There are a lot of things to juggle as an individual on a regular basis, but one key component is being productive. But procrastination stops us from being productive.

Procrastination is a very well-known word in recent times. We procrastinate daily because sometimes, we’re clueless about the task or confused by the complexity of that task and we tend to avoid the task until the deadline. 

According to psychology, Procrastination is the act of delaying or putting off tasks until the last minute, or past the deadline. Some researchers define procrastination as a "form of self-regulation failure characterized by the irrational delay of tasks despite potentially negative consequences." 

Why do we procrastinate?

There are many reasons behind us procrastinating. But science has an overall answer for this. 

Behavioral psychology research found a thing called “time consistency”. Time consistency refers to the tendency of the human brain to value immediate rewards more highly than future rewards. What this means is that we only set goals for the future and instead of starting immediately, we tend to start late. Therefore, our present self has nothing to do and it makes us procrastinate.

How to not do it

Over the years, people have developed many methods/ways to stop procrastinating. All these methods proved to be very helpful. Among them, some of the best ways are-

1. Time Management-

• Time management is the first thing we should do to avoid procrastinating. It varies from person to person. 

• It helps us to manage everything. We also have the tracks of what we have to do. 

2. Proper Planning-

• We tend to dive into a new task, without thinking about how we are gonna do that, or how we are gonna complete the task. Therefore, we end up making mistakes. And either, leave the task halfway or don’t meet the deadline to complete the task.

• One of the favorite tools psychologists use to overcome procrastination is called a “commitment device.” Commitment devices can help you stop procrastinating by designing your future actions ahead of time.

3. Removing Potential Distraction-

• Distractions are one of the main reasons to procrastinate. 

• Some people like to keep many unnecessary things not related to the thing they’re doing. And the typical scenario is, they leave the task undone and focus on those unnecessary things that make them procrastinate.

 

4. Using Techniques-

There are many techniques we can follow to stop ourselves from progressive procrastinating. 

• Pomodoro method- It's a very simple method. All you've to do is break down your tasks into small ones. Then, you've to set a timer to complete each task. Basically, it's 25 minutes long with a 5 minutes break. This tricks your brain into focusing on one task for 25 minutes. Then, the 5 minutes break helps your brain retrain for another 25 minutes. The time can be different. It can be 50 min-10 min or 40 min-5 min.

• Two minutes rule- David Allen(author of the book "Getting things done") came up with this idea. This rule is very easy to follow. If there is any task that will take less than two minutes to be done, you should do it right now. It helps people to complete the little things very fast and in the end, a lot of tasks get done which makes the person complete other difficult tasks.

• Five minutes rule- This rule applies to big tasks. So if you have a thing to do and don't want to do that, then all you have to do is to convince yourself to do the thing for 5 minutes. What happens is that it tricks our brain to keep doing it for a longer period of time. 

We, all procrastinate as humans. This is a bad habit we have been practicing for a long time. So, procrastination cannot be totally stopped. However, it can be reduced by using those methods.