Welcome to Part 4 in Gaetano’s series on procrastination. He’s shown us the causes and possible effects. Now some ways to rid ourselves of this habit.

Procrastination Mini-Series – Procrastination Killers

by Gaetano Caruana

After reviewing what are the causes and effects of procrastination in previous articles in this procrastination mini series, this last article will highlight what are the main procrastination killers.

Productive Environment: Proper lighting, comfortable chair and desk and possibly an inspiring view might help to motivate you to work. Your productive environment must definitely eliminate distractions such as gadgets that you normally play with and unnecessary tools that you currently don’t need.

Public Commitment: This is by far one of the best tips that helped me smash procrastination. By making peers check your progress, you are automatically motivated to work. If you procrastinate you will have to find a decent reason why you have not finished your work.

Think about consequences: Falling behind in team work might be a threat to your job and your career in general. Think about the consequences that your procrastination has on your life and you will see that it will motivate you to get started with your work.

Track Results: Writing goals down is the first step to make them happen. Result tracking will help you to first of all identify whether you have a procrastination problem and how serious it is. Results will clearly show you how much procrastination is keeping you behind. Such thing will motivate you to start working now to stop your procrastination problem.

Result tracking can be done by to do lists. A to do list is a simple list in which you include all the tasks that need your attention. A to do list can be created using pen and paper but can be more efficiently kept organised with to do list software. To do list software provides all the advantages of the traditional pen and paper to do list and much more. To do list software will let you prioritise tasks, sort them, filter through the task list, and modify existing tasks, as well as remind you of pending tasks.

As has been said earlier in this procrastination mini-series, you choose to be a procrastinator. There is no such thing as innate procrastination. I agree, procrastination is not an easy thing to beat but with the right tips and help you can make it, as others did.

Gaetano Caruana writes for the FruitfulTime Blog, where you’ll find the free ebook Stop Procrastination Now.

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Thanks, Gaetano! I really appreciate this series.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Welcome to Part 3 in Gaetano’s series on procrastination. We know the causes. Time to talk about the effects.

Procrastination Mini-Series – Effects

by Gaetano Caruana

Procrastination seems to be fun to do at first but it won’t take long until the procrastinator feels the effects of his/her choice. Procrastination has devastating effects on the person who does it and is completely not worth it. In this part of the procrastination mini-series, I am going to highly some of the procrastination effects, with the hope of making you more aware about procrastination and motivate you to avoid it or work hard to beat it.

Sense of guilt: Even though it is you who choose to procrastinate, you still feel guilty for doing it. The fact that you waste time instead of getting things done makes you feel bad with yourself. Even though, with a lot of effort and working extreme hours, you manage to make it by the deadline of a particular task, you will still feel guilty. This is because you will have doubts whether you could have produced something of better quality if you made good use of your time.

Become a liar: In today’s world nobody works alone. Everyone is part of a team and every team member depends on other members. The fact that you procrastinate and fall behind schedules makes you feel bad, since you keep back the whole team with you. When asked to give reasons for the delays, you start lying to find excuses to cover up your procrastination problem.

Prone to other vices: A study conducted by Fuschia Sirois and Timothy Pychyl of Carleton University, clearly shows that procrastinators are more prone to start other vices such as smoking or abusing alcohol. Starting new vices will further make it difficult for you to stop procrastinating and will further make your life miserable

Health Problems: Living a procrastinator life is not easy! Procrastination has both psychological and physical effects. The same study by Fuschia Sirois and Timothy Pychyl shows that college students that procrastinate in their schoolwork are more likely to have health problems such as suffering from insomnia, diet and exercise problems

Gaetano Caruana writes for the FruitfulTime Blog, where you’ll find the free ebook Stop Procrastination Now.

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Thanks, Gaetano!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Welcome to Part 2 in Gaetano’s series on procrastination. Knowing where it starts seems to be a great place to dig in.

Procrastination Mini-Series – Causes

by Gaetano Caruana

The first step to deal with your procrastination problem is to identify its causes, the reasons why you procrastinate. It is common that a lot of people procrastinate due to a subconscious reason; that is they don’t know exactly why they procrastinate. Others think they know all causes for their procrastination problem. When I started researching procrastination I thought I formed part of the latter but to my surprise, I discovered that I knew only half the reasons why I used to procrastinate.

Fear: For some a particular task or duty seems to be bigger than them making them afraid to face it. In this case procrastination seems to be the easy way out, a form of escapism, from reality.

Escapism: Either because you are afraid to take responsibility of a challenging task or because you are lazy, you choose to escape from reality hence you procrastinate. Such people lie to themselves and come up with excuses such as: having other more important things to do or they need more time to handle that task in order to avoid the challenge posed by a particular duty.

It is very difficult to find out whether you procrastinate due to escapism or because you are afraid. This is because both fear and escapism is most of the time in our subconscious. You have to reflect and be honest to yourself in order to find out whether the above two reasons are in fact what causes you to procrastinate.

Perfectionist: Being aware of the quality of what you produce is an excellent attribute to have. But if you take it too far, perfectionism becomes a minus since it will slow you down. Ideally you only produce perfect stuff but in the real world, you have to learn how to strike a balance between the time it takes to produce something and its quality. Unfortunately perfectionists choose to invest a lot of time in one task from many tasks they need to get done.

Vicious Circle: The fact that in the past you had procrastinated has a direct influence on your future behaviour. People that procrastinated in the past are prone to keep procrastinating. It seems to be extremely difficult to break the chains that hold you back from becoming more productive. Like every other habit procrastination poses a challenge but by applying the right techniques, which will be described in the next article in this series, you can make it easier for yourself to smash your procrastination problem.

Gaetano Caruana writes for the FruitfulTime Blog, where you’ll find the free ebook Stop Procrastination Now.

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Thanks, Gaetano!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Recently I had the pleasure to have a conversation with Gaetano Caruana about collaborations. From that discussion a series was born. I invited Gaetano to write a series on procrastination. For the next few Thursdays you’ll find it here on Successful Blog. Today it begins with the Introduction.

Procrastination Mini-Series – Introduction

by Gaetano Caruana

A lot of people confuse laziness with procrastination. They are not the same. A procrastinator is not necessarily a lazy person. Procrastination is a personal behaviour that makes a person defer doing things for several reasons which will be discussed later in this series.

Procrastination varies in intensity from one procrastinator to another. Depending on the intensity, procrastination can pose a challenge to the life of the procrastinator since it can be a complete killer of his/her personal productivity, making the procrastinator feel useless.

Unfortunately procrastination is taken lightly especially in the U.S. One of five people consider themselves as chronic procrastinators — meaning that they get fined for not filing tax returns, handing assignments late and missing out on opportunities or discounts. Is that enough to prove how lightly some people view this problem?

Contrary to what people think, procrastinators are made and not born. A person chooses to be a procrastinator. Because procrastination is a choice, a procrastinator can also choose to start making good use of time. In this series I will be describing the main causes of procrastination, the effects of procrastination, and how to punch procrastination in the face by applying procrastination killers.

Is procrastination stealing your time?

Gaetano Caruana writes for the FruitfulTime Blog, where you’ll find the free ebook Stop Procrastination Now.

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Thanks, Gaetano! See you next week!

–ME “Liz” Strauss