To truly understand why we procrastinate, you have to evaluate the impulse that drives action. We tend to think that logical reasoning such as cause & effect would drive us to complete a task, we believe if we’re able to break down a problem into atomic units, it should become much easier to get started. However the problem does not lie in our rational thinking or logical comprehension, we often simply lack the impulse to undertake the task at hand. For one, it appears daunting or simply boring. Either way, you don’t want to do it although you know how to. This is the zone which I’d like to call the ‘deadlock’ where you’re stuck and cannot untangle yourself from the mental knot of doing the job.
This means procrastination is really a feeling and not a rational bottleneck. Because if you are confused or don’t know how to finish a task, the immediate outcome is anxiety and it's this uncomfortable feeling that compels you to seek help and get answers. In this state, you’re doing something that navigates you towards your goal. However once you’ve discovered the solution and you actually have to execute it, you hit a wall and don’t want to do it anymore. At this point, you’re experiencing a new feeling. It's not anxiety but despair. Despair transforms into self-pity and you feel miserable that you have to complete something.
However once you’ve discovered the solution and you actually have to execute it, you hit a wall and don’t want to do it anymore.
To identify yourself with this feeling of self-despair is the primary reason to procrastinate.
You suddenly feel that the work you’re doing has little significance, has a poor success rate and possibly no tangible outcome. You practically kill every motivation to complete the task because you’ve identified so strongly with a feeling.
Negative self-talk is the next stage in this sink hole which eventually convinces you that there is little purpose in doing the job at all. It is because we identify success with happiness, we seek a quantifiable result that evokes this emotion.
As long as you associate your action with a favourable feeling, procrastination will haunt you indefinitely.
Even if you’ve been successful before, you would still get stuck in the loop because you’ve identified with a probability of failure.
Feelings and emotional swings are not in your control. They are created within you by forces outside your realm. There is practically no use in blaming external circumstances for your feelings as it only worsens the spiral of procrastination.
The only way out of this storm is to dis-connect your feelings from the task you set for yourself. The most important reason we procrastinate is because we want a favourable feeling at the end of doing it. If the first time you did something and the result did not evoke a pleasant feeling, it is very likely you’re going to procrastinate the next time. On the other hand, if you take up the task as a skill you’re trying to develop and oblivious to the feeling it evokes, you will keep ticking come night or day.
Success and Failure have become emotions rather than constructive outcomes towards self-improvement. The world is driving itself into a paranoia of measuring self-worth with this needless quest for zero failure. Because if you were to fail even once and identify yourself with this feeling, you’re inviting every reason to procrastinate.
Thanks for reading
