How do I stop my procrastination habit?

Why do I procrastinate so much?

Proven tips to stop procrastinating once and for all!

You have a deadline looming. However, instead of doing your work, you are fiddling with miscellaneous things like checking email, social media, watching videos, surfing blogs and forums. You know you should be working, but you just don’t feel like doing anything.

What to do? Use time-management techniques

One obvious way to tackle procrastination is to start managing your time better – to create an overview of upcoming tasks, set yourself rules for prioritising, and plan how to spend time productively. Although this won’t address your emotional discomfort or your avoidance directly, it can serve a preventative role. By increasing your sense of control, you’ll calm your emotional state and it’s less likely you’ll feel the need to procrastinate.

Procrastination has many faces.

Sometimes it’s simply choosing pleasure over discipline. Sometimes it’s an attempt to avoid something negative. And sometimes it’s getting paralyzed by overwhelming expectations. Therefore, here are different reasons why we procrastinate, plus a customized approach for each:

The task isn’t urgent. Solution: Consider the big picture.
We don’t know how to start or what comes next. Solution: Build confusion into the task.
We're afraid of failure. Solution: Untangle performance and self-worth.
Some of us work better under pressure. Solution: Know thyself.
We just don’t want to do our work. Solution: Measure and compensate.

Douglas Wilkin

Sprecher