Do you recognise procrastination in your life? Are you a procrastinator? Do you dread deadlines? You know that piece of work is due in 3 weeks. The night before the work is due, you are burning the midnight oil to get it all finished. Is this something that you recognise and feel helpless to change?

I can be a great procrastinator. Those jobs that I really dislike or those I do not know how to tackle languish at the bottom of my endless “to-do” list. I hope that they will magically disappear…..sadly not! In fact, not getting on and sorting them out brings me more stress than if I just got on and did them.

There is a great TED talk by Tim Urban Tim Urban: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator | TED – YouTube. He talks about procrastination in very light-hearted way. However he received a lot of emails. Lots of people wrote to him stating that they recognise themselves as “procrastinators”. This makes them feel inadequate and that they have a character flaw and they should not be feeling this way.

What’s the problem with procrastination?

Basically it is a form of avoidance. It is intended to avoid the stress of an experience or an emotion from a situation or interaction. Procrastination is keeping us safe. It allows us to cope with things. There is such a thing as healthy avoidance. One example is avoiding driving while tired will reduce the likelihood of having an accident. There is also unhealthy avoidance – you do not get into the car to go out as you are worried about interacting with people and you want to avoid social situations.

The avoidance will in fact, make the stress longer and intensity of the stress increase. This is what Tim Urban calls the playing in the “dark playground”. The playground is dark as its filled with guilt and remorse leading to stress and worry.

What is underneath procrastination and worry is our stack of limiting beliefs. A classic of mine is “I don’t want to talk to that person as they will think I am stupid”. I have lots of beliefs around what people think of me and they are definitely limiting. They have stopped me speaking up in meetings, volunteering to project manage and most recently nearly stopped me from applying for my boss’s job. But I did take a deep breath and submitted the application. Sadly I was not shortlisted but I definitely would not have had the opportunity to be considered if I did not submit the application.

Limiting beliefs also erroneously try and keep us safe. They prevent us from tackling that conversation that could lead to a promotion or pay rise. Those beliefs keep us playing small. They are our leeches that hang on to us and sap our energy and keep us stuck.

What can you do?

How can you stop procrastination? It all starts with recognition. When you can see those limiting beliefs, those pesky leeches, you can start recognising them for what they are and how they are keeping you small. Then you can squash them!

Having trouble seeing the leeches- not sure what to do when you recognise them? Come and have a discovery call with me at The Professionals Coach and let see how many leeches we can recognise and squash them all one by one!