The Habit of Procrastination

 

A lot has been said about procrastination. Different time management coaches have dived much into this topic and every finding has been much a surprise than what has been assumed for long. For decades and millenniums, the habit of procrastination has been thought to be a negative behavior. In fact, linguists made an effort to generate a proverb; ‘Procrastination is the thief of time.’ Now, that is linguistical view of procrastination, what about yourself? Do you too view procrastination as a thief of time? Do you view procrastination as negative energy? When you keep on saying I will register for a course and you don’t, or you say I am going to drop a message to her and you don’t, how do you feel about it? What about if you keep on delaying a certain revenge? Shall that be still procrastination?

The truth is that there is nothing wrong about procrastination once it’s used wisely. Procrastination is a tool and you are the farmer. The farmer directs how the jembe should work. The panga cannot work without receiving commands, neither can a wheel barrow move on its own even on a sloppy area. The human being rides the motorcycle and not vice versa. This is how you should be viewing procrastination. You solely choose what to do and not to do. In other words, you have the full control and powers over what to procrastinate and not to. Your choice matters. If you choose chitchatting on Facebook or WhatsApp while you have loads of office tasks to attend to, that is purely your choice. You are basically procrastinating on something important over something you can totally eliminate without any adverse effects on your career. Shall it not be beautiful, if you do the reverse?

Basically, there are two kinds of procrastination as speaker, Mel Robbins puts it in his book, ‘The 5 Second Rule.’

‘I was also surprised to learn there are two kinds of procrastination: destructive procrastination, which is when you avoid tasks you need to complete, and productive procrastination, which is an important part of any creative process.’

                                                                                                  Mel Robins.

Let’s straight away begin with productive procrastination. It is called constructive procrastination. When you have a very good project which you are working on, and you give yourself a break of let’s say, 2-3 days, do not be burned out, what you may unconsciously be practicing is productive procrastination. The break you are giving yourself helps in rejuvenating your energy and you may find yourself bouncing back with fresh ideas over something that had really eaten up your time. Another example is a recurring procrastination about revenging a certain act that was done to you 2 years back. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this.

 

On the other hand, destructive procrastination, lies in the failure to do what you should do while knowing very well about the negative consequences tied to that single behaviour. It is the most common type that most people practice. This type of procrastination is poison to your productivity. It is the main reason why you have not done what you said you wanted to do 3 years down the line. When you choose to chat to a colleague at work when dozens of reports are waiting for you on your desk, that is injustice to you career. Remember the law of excluded alternative, ‘choosing to do one thing means not doing another.’ Later you’ll start complaining about time not being enough to do all that stuff you were supposed to, during the day. Mel Robbins will always tell you, ‘you will either find a way or find an excuse.’

On the next blog, we shall be looking at reason for procrastination ways of dealing with it once and for all.

© Time Coach