Earlier this month I posted about the types of procrastination and I came across on Leo Babauta’s post on procrastination. He makes a strong case that procrastination is a mindfulness problem. Agreed, Awareness is the essence of procrastination. Being Unaware is mostly the cause for procrastination, but lack of awareness is the cause of failure at anything, be it procrastination or a simple task of buying vegetables. I don’t say this is to undermine the point Leo makes, but to suggest that improving our awareness and being mindful is easily the best step towards a better life, a more happier and a calmer life. Meditation helps with your awareness and spending 20-30 minutes meditating everyday is totally worth. Sadhguru says if you cant dedicate 30 minutes a day to help yourself, nobody can help you.
It’s a given that I a procrastinate and no matter how hard I try, I haven’t been able to get rid of it ever, I have just learned to live with it. Not the best of the ways to deal with the problem, but trying harder or smarter hasn’t helped either. I just try to find new tools or new methods to keep me away from procrastinating, they do help a bit but haven’t fixed it totally. I am glad I am trying to learn more ways to stop procrastinating. I was so engrossed in getting rid of procrastination that I hardly realized that there are variety of procrastinations and they are classified based on what makes some one procrastinate, I learned from here that I am mostly a fun procrastinator.
Fun procrastination:
The fun procrastinator would rather be doing anything except that one dreaded task. After all, there’s so many fun and exciting things you could be doing instead, how can you bear to start that boring project?
That closely defines the procrastinator that I am, the inner nerd in me is always seeking some thing more fun and more interesting to do, so I can’t blame myself beyond a point for not completing my task. There is a good suggestion on how to combat it, which i think is what I am already using. But I think I wouldn’t just fall under just one type. Fun procrastination is mostly my type, but some times I would procrastinate because, I am a bit anxious to approach some one or some times I just want to do it as perfectly as possible that I never get around to starting it at all. Well that makes me fall under other types of procrastinators.
There are three more types of procrastination such as
- Anxious Procrastination.
- “Plenty of time” procrastination.
- Perfectionist procrastination.
You can read more about them by heading over here.
I think the task itself and its importance also defines how one starts to procrastinate. It also depends on the personality type of the individual. For example an introvert and perfectionist might suffer from both Anxious and Perfectionist type of procrastination.
Trying to follow one of the methods blindly thinking that we belong to a particular category won’t solve the problem. It takes continuous effort to be aware of the circumstances and the reason why we are procrastinating for each particular task and try to combat it accordingly.
How are you fighting your procrastination ? reply to me on twitter or on app.net
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