Best Ways to Beat Procrastination
Perseverance is about as important to achievement as gasoline is to driving a car. Sure, there will be times when you feel like you’re spinning your wheels, but you’ll always get out of the rut with genuine perseverance. Without it, you won’t even be able to start your engine.
The opposite of perseverance is procrastination. Perseverance means you never quit. Procrastination usually means you never get started, although the inability to finish something is also a form of procrastination.
Ask people why they procrastinate and you’ll often hear something like this: “I’m a perfectionist. Everything has to be just right before I can get down to work. No distractions; not too much noise; and of course I have to be feeling well physically, too. I can’t work when I have a headache.” The other end of procrastination—being unable to finish—also has a perfectionist explanation: “I’m just never satisfied; I’m my own harshest critic; if all the i’s aren’t dotted and all the t’s aren’t crossed, I just can’t consider that I’m done. That’s just the way I am, and I’ll probably never change.”
Do you see what’s going on here? A fault is being turned into a virtue. The perfectionist is saying their standards are just too high for this world. This fault-into-virtue syndrome is a common defense when people are called upon to discuss their weaknesses, but in the end it’s just a very pious kind of excuse-making. It certainly doesn’t have anything to do with what’s really behind procrastination.
Remember, the basis of procrastination could be fear of failure. That’s what perfectionism really is, once you take a hard look at it. What’s the difference between being afraid of being less-than-perfect or afraid of anything else? You’re still paralyzed by fear. What’s the difference between never starting or never finishing? You’re still stuck. You’re still going nowhere. You’re still overwhelmed by whatever task is before you. You’re still allowing yourself to be dominated by a negative vision of the future in which you see yourself being criticized, laughed at or punished. This negative vision of the future is really a mechanism that allows you to do nothing. It’s a very convenient mental tool.
I’m going to tell you how to beat procrastination. I’m going to show you how to turn procrastination into perseverance, and if you do what I suggest, the process will be virtually painless. It involves using two very powerful principles that foster productivity and perseverance instead of passivity and procrastination.
Be on the lookout for my next Blog where I will reveal 1 of the principles on how to beat procrastination....
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