Written by Dallea Caldwell

Written by Dallea Caldwell

Procrastinating by reading about procrastinating — how meta.

The biggest obstacle twiddling its thumbs between you and your goals is procrastination: your innocuous tendency to go on dilly-dallying when you should be diem carpe-ing.

We Procrastinate for Lots of Reasons:

– To put off unpleasant experiences in favor of immediate gratification.

– Because we have a natural bias towards underestimating the value of longer-term consequences/rewards no matter their actual importance.

– A lifetime of experience has reinforced indulging for the moment and narrowly dodging major consequences by rushing to action at the last minute.

Of course, even if you ace every exam with last-minute all-nighters, procrastination still has its consequences. 20% of people consider themselves chronic procrastinators, a group which sees higher rates of:

          – Insomnia

          – Compromised immunities

          – Strained relationships with those that rely on them personally/professionally/academically

Why Procrastinate When You Can Accomplish?

Fortunately, behavioral scientists have thought of a few nifty tricks for hitching your wagon back on track so that you can pull out of Procrastination Station.

          1. Start a to-do list.

          2. Break big tasks into smaller actionable items.

          3. Prioritize with the least pleasant or more daunting tasks first.

          4. Create a reward system for accomplishing smaller tasks.

One great strategy is called the Pomordoro Technique: for every 25 minutes of uninterrupted effort, reward yourself with a snack and a 5 minute break. This satisfies your need for immediate gratification while keeping you focused on achieving your goals.

And remember, if you were studiously searching the web for a service provider when aimless web surfing captured your attention and held you hostage for hours; go to www.talklocal.com, enter your to-do list, and procrastinate all you want for the next 90 secs or so. Before you know it, you will have talked to a local professional who will get the job done. A great time to start that reward system!

This entry was originally posted on Thursday, April 11th, 2013 at 7:00 am and is filed under Seva Call. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.