Knowing why you procrastinate and learning how to combat it are the only ways to change your behavior. You could be the perfectionist, the dreamer, the worrier or the defier. Procrastination can have practical consequences, such as falling behind at work or failing to achieve personal goals or to cross off errands from a to-do list. It has been associated with depression, anxiety and stress, poor sleep, inadequate physical activity, loneliness and economic difficulties, according to a January study of more than 3,500 college students.”The strategy you’re going to employ to beat procrastination is going to change based on the purpose procrastinating is serving for you,” a psychologist says. “It can leave people feeling very defeated and feeling like there’s no point in trying,” she adds. “Dreamers might also think of themselves as people for whom fate will intervene, making proactive work and efficiency appear unnecessary,” Yip says.. Train yourself to differentiate between dreams and goals, with six questions and approach to get things done. Write your plans into a timeline, specifying each step to each step, and then stick to that time limit for completing a task. Avoid all-or-nothing thinking and give yourself a time limit to complete a task, Sapadin says. The “dreamer” procrastinator doesn’t like the nitty-gritty details often needed to get projects done. “That’s kind of difficult or boring to execute,” she added. “The “defier”procrastinator might always want something better, and like a perfectionist might always always want to always do something better,” Sapadin said. The defier procrastinators tend to be indecisive and dependent on others for advice or reassurance before taking initiative on their own, she says. It can feel very shameful if you can’t do that, a Chicago-based clinical psychologist said. “Particularly in America, where so much of our worth is tied up into what we do, how we work, what we produce — it can feelvery shameful if we can’t” do that properly, she said, adding that it can leave you feeling “defiant” and “definitely not ready” to do something new or different. “Change the way you think about what you want to do, and you’ll start doing it,” a clinical psychologist says, “and it will become easier to get it done in the long run” The “perfectionist” is more likely to have a plan of how to get this task completed. “If (they) don’t have an insurmountable amount of effort, then the perfectionists will get lost,” a researcher says. A perfectionist needs things done perfectly — all Ts crossed and Is dotted — it takes a lot of effort. “Replace them with standards that are good enough instead while giving yourself permission to make some mistakes,” Shatz says. ‘The defier” is a person who wants something better than what is currently being done.
The e-commerce giant’s earnings call transcript. (Image credit: Google) The e-commerce giant’s earnings call transcript. (Image credit: Google)
