Discover What Stopping Procrastination Is

How to get things done

I recently recounted a recurrent dream to a friend. I’ve dreamt I’m having a bubble bath on a Friday afternoon and suddenly there’s a knock on the apartment door. In walk my Shabbat guests. I’m horrified to discover that while relaxing in my bathtub, without a care in the world, I’ve yet to begin my cooking. On awakening, the dream feels very real, until I remind myself that I typically shower and do most of my Shabbat cooking on Thursday, though there’s still lots to do on Friday. I typically don’t procrastinate, so while realizing that the dream could not possibly be real, it strikes me as somewhat funny. Years ago, walking into my neighbor’s apartment on a Friday afternoon, I’d watch her looking into her cupboard, contemplating what to make for Shabbat only a few hours away. While I found this stressful, she calmly served a delicious, fresh meal to her family. Likewise, on a Wednesday afternoon, she would be shocked to discover me peeling veggies, preparing for Shabbat. Things have averaged out: now we both cook on Thursday, each making it work, laughing about those days. While there’s always the worry that one might be caught unprepared, discover their guests have dietary restrictions, or find themselves with additional last-minute guests, most women I know could feed an IDF battalion on short notice. Many people dream of being unprepared – being late for class, forgetting to study for a test, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or being hopelessly lost. I don’t put a lot of emphasis on dreams in my practice, though I do help people with motivation, organization, procrastination, anxiety and fear, all underpinnings of these dreams and very much connected. It seems to be that time of year when many referrals have focused on stress and anxiety. These are often easy to treat because you can’t feel calm and anxious simultaneously, and it’s quite easy to teach someone how to become calm. Stressed about your “New Year’s resolutions” or lack thereof? Here are some suggestions for restoring calm, getting motivated and working towards sweet dreams! 1. Identify your potential stressors – large and small. Be very specific and notice how they make you feel. 2. Get started. Decide what needs to be done, visualize it and devise an action plan. 3. Make a “to do” list. List anything and everything. Use paper and pen so your brain fully appreciates crossing out completed items. Prioritize what must be completed first. Your immediate goal is to focus on the first three items. Put the rest of the list away until these are finished. If you’re feeling motivated, start with a more difficult item that you want to get out of the way. Then reward your productivity with something easier on your list. If that feels overwhelming, or you find yourself procrastinating, pick an easy item and enjoy a quick success. Then tackle the harder items. 4. Reward yourself for any and every task completed. Often, we notice only the big things. The small steps that went into the process are just as important. Appreciate the positives and literally pat yourself on the back, for example, because on a busy day, the laundry was gathered, loaded into the machine, dried and sorted. Don’t wait until it’s put away. Children, too, benefit from being praised for the small things. While you’re at it, find ways to outsource tasks to others when relevant. 5. Whether cooking, preparing for an exam or cleaning the house, break each project down into small manageable components and you’ll be amazed by what you can accomplish. If you enter a room and see it as overwhelmingly messy, you’ll walk back out, having given up. But if you decide that you’ll realistically tackle half a bookshelf you’ll be more enthusiastic about organizing the other half, even if you choose to wait until tomorrow.6. Put cellphones and other distractions into a drawer and use them as a reward after a predetermined amount of work is completed. 7. Designate a time to look at, and respond to, emails, mail, phone calls and texts. Try to handle each message only once to save time. The Internet takes up more time than you think. 8. Fake it ‘till you make it. Sure, you may not feel like doing something, but sometimes you just have to, and not doing it may exact a greater cost. I had a client who was putting off opening a letter, yet carrying it around made her anxious. I told her that together we’d handle her worst-case scenario. Reluctantly opening it, she discovered it was such a nothing, and then opened the second letter that had also been causing her much distress. What we imagine is often so much worse than the reality. Putting things off only increases our stress. Feeling so pleased that this was behind her, it strengthened her desire to stop procrastinating, and greatly reduced her anxiety. 9. If you wake at night with lists in your head, write your concerns on a notepad kept by the bed and let them go until morning. With nothing else to do about them in the middle of the night, they’ll feel less significant tomorrow. 10. Since you can’t be relaxed and anxious simultaneously, learn calming techniques. They’re easy and will enhance your concentration, help you get things accomplished, will improve your relationship with others, and are critical to better physical and emotional well-being. 11. Maintain a work-friendly environment. This literally allows you to breathe, have more energy and be focused. A neat play area for children, a well-organized desk that makes it easier to do homework, and a clutter-free workspace make it easier to accomplish tasks. Put one set of toys away before another comes out, keep small pieces together, and teach your children to clean up after themselves. 12. Make your bed as soon as you get out of it and teach your children to do the same. Reward them for their little successes and praise them for “trying.” Enlist the kids to get involved by not doing for them what they’re able to do themselves. Their pride in their accomplishments will be enormous. Take a step toward change: Use organization and motivation to better enjoy how you use your time. These are minutes or hours that you will never get back. Do you really want to waste them?  The writer is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in Ra’anana, and author of Life’s Journey: Exploring Relationships – Resolving Conflicts. She has written about psychology in The Jerusalem Post since 2000. ludman@netvision.net.il, www.drbatyaludman.com

I Finally Stopped Procrastinating! Now You Can Do It Too!

In this article, we are going to introduce procrastination and talk about some major concepts you need to learn. After understanding what procrastination is, we are going to explore different solutions you can use to escape the procrastination jail.

Procrastination is the art of avoiding necessary tasks and instead shifting the focus to more pleasant and satisfying ones. Procrastination is not entirely due to lack of self-motivation, laziness or incompetence. Scientifically-speaking, procrastination causes actual physical pain. The pain centers of the brain lights up when a procrastinator is on a dreadful task. When someone is confronted with pain, they don’t voluntarily approach but try to avoid it altogether. Procrastination is more of battle between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex controls planning and decision-making while the limbic system is a set of brain structures containing the pleasure center. The limbic system usually wins due to lack of development in the prefrontal cortex thus leading to procrastination.

The Perfectionist:

This is the most common type of procrastinators. We all have tasks that we like and dislike. We dislike the tasks we’re not good at and that’s why the perfectionists usually procrastinate. They spend too much time on a task they’re good at and wait for the last minute to finish the unpleasant tasks.

The Imposter:

An imposter procrastinator is one who is afraid of being judged on his work. As a result, tries to avoid revealing his work and thus procrastinating.

The Dread-filled:

This type of procrastinator won’t work on anything that does not excite him, and therefore will lose interest and motivation to finish the tasks required.

The Overwhelmed:

Usually when someone gets overwhelmed with tasks and responsibilities especially under a deadline. They would start with the most important task and finish the work step-by-step, however an overwhelmed procrastinator wouldn’t start with anything and therefore won’t finish the work required.

The Lucky:

There’s a group of procrastinators that have actually made peace with procrastination. They know how to tackle their tasks and get the work done on last minute.

Different Types Of Procrastinators

Procrastination is often viewed as a lifestyle (whether by choice or not) largely because the behaviors take over all aspects of the individual’s life. Put simply, procrastinators do not usually notice any negative consequences of performing tasks at the last minute and this is likely why they continue to keep up their procrastination habits

It’s a common misconception that procrastination is due to a problem with managing time, when in fact, it’s a much more complex issue. People who procrastinate don’t do it because they underestimate how long a task will take. Instead, they are overly optimistic about their ability to get the job done.

Procrastination has been linked to higher levels of consumption of alcohol among those people who drink. 1 out of 5 people admit that their procrastination has gotten so out of hand that they have jeopardized their jobs, credit, relationships, and even their health.

Research has shown that procrastinators often have a weakened immune system, meaning that they are more prone to develop gastrointestinal problems and suffer from colds as well as flu more frequently. Additionally, procrastinators are more likely to experience sleep disorders such as insomnia. Statistics show that procrastination affects over 20 % of the population. According to research, procrastination has more than quadrupled in the last 30 years.

In 1978, 5% of the population admitted to being chronic procrastinators compared to roughly 26% of the population today. Procrastination statistics suggest that 40% of people have experienced financial loss due to procrastination

Part of the reason why we procrastinate is because subconsciously, we find the work too overwhelming for us. Break it down into little parts, then focus on one part at the time. If you still procrastinate on the task after breaking it down, then break it down even further.

Create a detailed timeline with specific deadlines. Break down your project, then create an overall timeline with specific deadlines for each small task. This way, you know you have to finish each task by a certain date.

Eliminate your procrastination pit-stops. Get rid of the distractions around you. Turn off your phone and disable the automatic notification option in your email client when you want to work on a task.

Hang out with people who inspire you to take action. Identify the people, friends or colleagues who trigger you — most likely the go-getters and hard workers — and hang out with them more often. Soon you will inculcate their drive and spirit too.

Tell others about your goals. Tell all your friends, colleagues, acquaintances and family about your projects. Now whenever you see them, they are bound to ask you about your status on those projects.

Stop over-complicating things. Are you waiting for a perfect time to do this? That maybe now is not the best time because of X, Y, Z reasons? Ditch that thought because there’s never a perfect time. If you keep waiting for one, you are never going to accomplish anything.

Get a grip and just do it. At the end, it boils down to taking action. You can do all the strategizing, planning and hypothesizing, but if you don’t take action, nothing’s going to happen. Occasionally, I get readers and clients who keep complaining about their situations but they still refuse to take action at the end of the day.

A big part of overcoming procrastination is to find proper motivation. I highly encourage you to read the following article on the true essence of motivation:

I want you to yourself a question right now, what motivates you? Now often times when I ask people this question, they…

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5 steps to stop procrastinating on your health goals

Are you still procrastinating on your health goals?

The simple act of procrastination can make your situation worse by increasing your stress level. As stress builds from carrying the burden of unfinished business, you may feel more fatigued, resulting in less motivation to take the necessary steps.

Over time, stress can suppress your immune system and lead to increased stomach and digestive issues. Consider the following tips to stop dragging your feet toward better health.

First, pick one small change. The pressure to overhaul our eating habits to be healthier is immense, but in reality, you can achieve great success by making one small change every three to four weeks. For example, if you eat a 240-calorie candy bar every afternoon, replacing that with a 60-calorie apple instead would save you 180 calories per day, resulting in weight loss of 18.8 pounds over a full year. Making one small change like that every three weeks would result in 17 changes to your diet over the course of a year, which would make a significant impact on your health without much, if any, added stress.

Second, prioritize. Time is valuable, and it takes intention and practice to make sure we use our time wisely. Urgent tasks or tasks that seem endless, like cleaning dishes in the sink or mowing the yard, often get in the way of completing the tasks on our to-do list that benefit us long-term. If meal planning is something you feel would be beneficial to achieve your health goal, are you making that the first thing you do as you head into the weekend? Failing to get this done right away makes finding the time to shop harder on the weekends, and it may cut into meal prep time as well. Prioritizing is an important habit to form if you want to be successful at improving your diet and overall health.

Third, plan your time. If you do not wake up with a game plan for the day, you are already wasting your time and potentially increasing your stress level as the day unfolds. With a good calendar and a couple of minutes of planning before bedtime each night, you can maximize your efficiency as you rise and shine for the next day. Look at each day and what it will take to reach your health goals. Perhaps you need to put a meal in the slow cooker before you leave for work? Do you need to shift your workout from after work to your lunch hour ?

Fourth, prepare in advance. The average person is faced with more than 200 food choices a day, which can get exhausting and drain your will to make healthy choices. Packing meals and snacks builds in natural control of your food choices and reduces the number of decisions you have to make, which is an effective energy-saving strategy. By preparing and packing food in advance, you can use your time more wisely, and save some brain drain so you can invest that energy into something else on your to-do list.

Fifth, practice makes perfect. If you are in the habit of saying, “I will start tomorrow,” it will take both intention and a new routine to break the old habit. If you find yourself falling back into your old ways, give yourself grace and redirect your actions. With practice, you will break the old habit and that new habit will feel like second nature in no time.

Niki Kubiak is a sports-certified registered dietitian, competitive runner and owner of Niki Kubiak Sports Nutrition and Weight Loss.