Signs You're Procrastinating

Procrastination can cause serious consequences in our personal and professional lives, of course if you are reading this post, you may have first hand experience of putting things off until later.

I was reading an article by Denis Duvauchell--3/27/14 in Life Hacks called Brain Freeze: the science of procrastination and our 'smart' brains. He notes procrastination is an emotional response triggered from signals the brain is sending that something is a threat to our well-being. He describes it in this way, if you are assigned a task, your brain assesses whether there will be a positive or negative effect. If there is not a positive result expected then anxiety is triggered. We are then afraid to move for perceived fear of negative consequences.

Common Signs You Are Procrastinating:

• You are waiting for just the right moment to start
• Wait to start for enough time to make it perfect
• Must be in the right mood to get started
• Not sure how to do something
• Believe you work better under pressure
• Embarrassed, you don't know how to do something
• Perpetual planner

If you have a list of projects and start noticing that some keep getting pushed to the bottom of the list, you might be procrastinating. This is a good time to study the situation and your resistance to getting started. Questions are the gateway to learning more.

Here are a few questions to get you started:

• What do you  notice when you're procrastinating?
• What makes it feel like Kryptonite?
• Who else is involved in the project?
• What kinds of thoughts are you thinking?
• What's the truth within those thoughts?
• What else might you want to learn to make it easier?
• What happens once you get started?

I won't promise you'll never procrastinate again, the truth is nothing is perfect. We are all a work in progress. Henry Ford says it best, "If you think you can do it, you can, if you think you can't, you can't."


What are you waiting for?

You Can Do It!

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