P3. ## Procrastinate ##

"Procrastinate" means to delay or postpone doing something. It refers to the act of intentionally putting off tasks that need to be done, often doing less urgent or easier tasks instead. For example, if someone has a project due in a week, but they spend their time watching television instead of working on it, they are procrastinating. Procrastination is often associated with avoidance of difficult or unpleasant tasks.

 

If you procrastinate, you keep leaving things you should do until later, often because you do not want to do them.
ex) Most often we procrastinate when faced with something we do not want to do. 

 

[ The ONLY way to stop procrastinating | Mel Robbins ]

"Believe it or not, procrastination has nothing to do with your work. Procrastination is a form of stress relief."

 

"When you get into work you got stuff to do you kinda walk in and you got this big stress ball that subconsciously is hanging over your head and so you walk in and you sit down and you know you got 13 phone calls you need to make and you also know that you've been chickening out, you've been making easy calls and there's a bunch of CIOs or other people that are higher level that you haven't been calling and so as you sit down to do it you've got the stress on your shoulders your brain that it starts to go 'wait a mintue, you want me to make a call to somebody that I'm scared to make? Absolutely not. I'm so stressed out about. Can we just watch some cat videos for a minute?' And next thing you know an hours gone by. And then of course what do you do? You beat yourself up."

 

"So the only way that you can break this habit and that's an important word for you to hear. You're not a procrastinator you have a habit of procrastinating. Big difference because if it's a habit I can teach you to use science to break it."

 

"You see all habits have three parts. There's a trigger and in the case of procrastination, the trigger is always stress. Then there's a pattern you repeat and in the case of procrastination, it is to avoid doing something. And then there's a reward. You get a little stress relief. The only way to break a habit you guys is not to deal with triggers. You're never gonna get rid of stress in your life. But you can 100% change your pattern of avoiding work.

 

"So next time you're in a situation where you feel yourself hesitate, you spent way too much time checking out the highlights from last night's scores, what you gonna do is you're gonna go up I must be stressed out about something. Acknowledge the stress. Then go 5 4 3 2 1. I want you to count to yourself because I want you to interrupt the habit that stored here and I want you to awaken your prefrontal cortex then I want you to just work. Just for five minutes. The reason why I want you to only work for five minutes is because your problem isn't working. It's the habit of avoiding. I just need you to start and here' the other cool thing. We know based on research that if we can get you to start 80% of you are going to keep going."

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x7MkLDGnu8 

 

 

 

 

 

[ Why you procrastinate even when it feels bad  |  Ted-Ed ]

Why do we keep procrastinating even when we know it's bad for us?

 

To be clear, putting something off isn't always procrastinating. Responsible time management requires deciding which tasks are important and which ones can wait. Procrastination is when we avoid a task we said we would do, for no good reason, despite expecting our behavior to bring negative consequences. 

Obviously, it's irrational to do something you expect to harm you. But ironically, procrastination is the result of our bodies trying to protect us, specifically by avoiding a task we see as threatening. 

 

We're most likely to procrastinate tasks that evoke negative feelings, such as dread, incompetence, and insecurity. 

 

Studies of procrastinating university students have found participants were more likely to put off tasks they perceived as stressful or challenging. And the perception of how difficult the task is increases while you're putting off.

 

It's a common misconception that all procrastinators are lazy. 

 

In fact, many people procrastinate because they care too much. Procrastinators often report a high fear of failure, putting things off because they're afraid their work won't live up to their high standards.

Whatever the reason for procrastination, the results are often the same. Frequent procrastinators are likely to suffer from anxiety and depression, ongoing feelings of shame, higher stress levels and physical ailments associated with high stress. Worst of all, while procrastination hurts us in the long run, it does temporarily reduces our stress level, reinforcing it as a bodily response for coping with stressful tasks. 

 

So, how can we break the cycle of procrastination?

Traditionally, people thought procrastinators needed to cultivate discipline and practice strict time management. But today, many researchers feel the exact opposite. Being too hard on yourself can layer additional bad emotions onto a task, making the threat even more intense. To short-circuit this stress response, we need to address and reduce these negative emotions. 

Some simple strategies include breaking a task into smaller elements or journaling about why it's stressing you out and addressing those underlying concerns. 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWTNMzK9vG4