Procrastination, a word which always haunts people. Why do we procrastinate? Why its about prioritizing less important tasks first leaving most important things for later? That later in turn never comes though. Well all of us are the victim of this thing. Whether you agree or not but if you look closely, you are doing it everyday of your life!
I would try to explain this with help of real life example. You want to lose weight. You plan to go on a diet. What most of you would do is to think, "I will start from tomorrow." I would cite my case here. I am a victim of procrastination since quite a long time. I have many things in mind which I keep on delaying. Some things I delay too much that they are out of my to do list. I wondered many times but I was not able to find answer to this question. One night while I was listening to a trance track on my iPhone, I simply closed my eyes and gave it a thought. I found out that all possible reasons for procrastination can be summarised in two points.
Procrastination can be due to 2 main reasons. Either you are hidebound or you are getting more and more attached to the...
Posted bySaurabh Chawla on Monday, May 11, 2015
Now, coming back to the above statement which I posted on my Facebook timeline on 12th May 2015, Procrastination can be due to two main reasons: one is that you are hidebound and second is that you are doing things considering the outcome only. Let's discuss both of them in brief:
Being hidebound is something everybody has in themselves to some extent. People are unwilling to change because of some traditions and some conventions which are hard wired in their brains since birth. Our beliefs come from experiences we have in life. Since our experiences are different, our beliefs can never be same. For example, a person who has been cheated by someone will have different belief about the person and he would be careful dealing with other persons as well. On the other hand if a person has never been cheated would see the same person and other persons without any hatred as he/she has not had bad experience with him.
Our experiences throughout life set an unalterable belief system in our minds and it grows more strong as we all grow up. The point is not about we don't need to change, the point is that if you need a change, you have to change. A strong belief system can be altered only by you and nobody else. This will lead you to stay where you are. You will not move ahead and thus you tend to procrastinate. It will keep you stuck at the same place. You would think that whatever you do, you would have to be within that boundary of your so called belief system. Only you could break it and start working towards what you actually want to do and kill procrastination.
2) You are attached to outcome only:
A recent quote I read about life by Ernest Hemingway is shared below which will make it more easier to undestand what I actually mean to say.
No matter you reach towards the end or not, at that very point, its the journey that matters after all. Imagine you are going on a hill station. You can go by road or by air. Either way, you would reach you destination but going by road would be more enjoyable than going by air. Agreed?
What we actually do is that we think about the result even before putting in inputs from our side. That creates a sense of fear which keeps us from putting in the required inputs. Now if required inputs are not provided, how one can get the desired output? If a body builder fears about pain he is gong to have after working out, he will not even touch the weights. Then how he is going to build that body? The point here is to enjoy the process of reaching the desired goal rather than worrying about the outcome.
If you relate, the above two reasons are responsible for people to procrastinate. Just sit back with a calm mind and think about what is stopping you from doing the most important thing you want to do but you are delaying that. Once you get the answer, I am sure you would be able to solve the problem of procrastination.