How to End Procrastination Forever

Procrastinating is a common problem for many people – including people searching for a job. Procrastination, itself, can be defined as the act of habitually delaying a task in a foolhardy manner. Usually procrastination involves distracting yourself with another activity that can include surfing the internet, cleaning, sleeping, playing computer games, or other activity. Additionally, in your mind, you can often justify your procrastination delay tactics.

How do you go about overcoming procrastination issues though?

The first step to work towards overcoming this problem is to realize that you do in fact have a problem with procrastination. For instance, if you delay a task, it may not necessarily mean that you have a problem with procrastination. It is only when the problem becomes chronic – and you are consistently delaying that job search for example, that it means that procrastination has taken hold.

Once you do realize that you do suffer from procrastination, there are some practical yet simple strategies that you can follow. The first thing that you should do is realize that you will not have favorable feelings when you think about your job search or other tasks that you are delaying. By anticipating your negative feelings, you then will not feel overwhelmed when you do try to complete your postponed tasks.

Next, you should “make yourself” work on your task for a short time - say twenty minutes. By completing this task, you are allowing yourself to actually start on a project - which is more than half the battle when it comes to procrastination. Further, once you begin a task, your perception of the task usually changes and you are able to complete more than twenty minutes of work. That said, even if you only work on the project for the predetermined twenty minutes, completing this amount of work should boost your confidence levels. In turn, you tend not to procrastinate when you are confident in your abilities.

That said, you should also try to determine the reason behind your procrastination. For instance, some people procrastinate because they are perfectionists, because they fear failure, because they are constant worriers, because they have impulsive personalities and so on. Once you understand the root cause of your procrastination issues, you can determine the appropriate solution to combat these problems. For instance, if you have an impulsive personality and thus, you get distracted easily, you can adopt mechanisms that work to minimise these distractions (such as turning off your cell phone, shutting your office door, not checking your email and so on).

Above all though, as most people are troubled by their procrastination, you should “be easy on yourself” – and take the necessary steps to overcome procrastination issues.

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Larisa Redins is a full time writer and editor with degrees in both Arts and Biological Science. She writes about career issues and other topics for a variety of international websites, magazines, and businesses.