It’s so easy to put things off. Something more exciting can come up or maybe you’re just feeling lazy. Why do something right now when you can do it later? How can one procrastinate, let me count the ways:
- Putting something important off to watch TV, surf the web, play video games, etc…
- Instead of doing what you know deep down needs to be done, you pretend something else is a higher priority and do that task instead.
- Putting something you don’t want to do off indefinitely with the hope that you may never have to do it.
The biggest problem with procrastinating is that it prevents you from doing the things that you need to do. Now I’m not suggesting that you don’t have any downtime, just remember to get the important things out of the way first.
One quality I’ve noticed about people that I know personally and consider successful is that they don’t procrastinate. If you ask them to do something, they either do it immediately, or they get to it as soon as they get back to their home/office/etc…
So how do you combat this? First, you need to realize that you’re doing it. Once you become consciously aware of the fact that you’re putting something off, you can correct the behavior. Tony Robbins has a great suggestion for dealing with procrastination: put it off. So when you catch yourself procrastinating, put off the non-important task until later.
James Feudo owns the Boston Web Design Agency JVF Solutions and loves blogging about personal development and communication in his spare time.