You have wanted many things until today. Maybe you couldn't achieve some of them. You kept postponing the things you couldn't achieve, and then you felt worthless for years with the feeling of inadequacy caused by these accumulated failures. With each failure, your negative feelings and thoughts increased and you learned to postpone, and you postponed because it was easier to postpone than to face failure.
The word "Procrastination" in English literature, which does not have an exact equivalent in Turkish, is defined as 'Postponing, leaving it for later, taking it slow'. The well-known process is a pattern of behavior that many people have become accustomed to today. The responsibilities we have as human beings and our desire to fulfill these responsibilities are different. We often find ourselves postponing tasks we don't like or don't want to do. However, when we start doing this too often, 'leaving it until the last minute' becomes a habit and prevents us from revealing our potential.
People who make procrastination a habit typically postpone things in all areas of life (Demiriz, 2015). They have diet lists that they tear up from newspaper columns and save, hoping to implement them one day, bills that are past due, and overdue health checks. In fact, what we postpone is not the task we avoid doing, but the negative emotion we believe we will feel as a result of this task, and most of the time we are not aware of it. For example; A student who constantly postpones studying is not running away from studying, but from negative emotions such as anger, sadness, and boredom that he will feel while doing this job that he does not like at all. Instead of doing what we should be doing at a certain moment, we postpone what we really need to do by doing things we enjoy more. In other words; We prefer jobs that give pleasure in the short term to long-term jobs. However, when this long-term procrastination behavior begins to harm our family, our career, and even our health, it begins to be defined as 'harmful behavior', its consequences reach pathological dimensions and become a problem that needs to be treated.
As in the treatment of most psychological problems, The first step in treating the harmful habit of procrastination is to become aware of it. We must be honest with ourselves �, we need to discuss the moments when we start procrastinating and their consequences. We must realize that we constantly make excuses for things we don't want to do, that we look for needs to distract us the moment we sit down at work, and that the breaks we take saying 'Just 5 minutes' take us hours.
Then we need to find the reasons for our procrastination behavior. For example; Reasons such as fear of failure, feeling inadequate, working without a schedule, wanting to do things at the same time and in a short time, being undecided about work priorities, perfectionism and having unclear goals may cause us to postpone our responsibilities. Another reason why procrastination behavior becomes a habit is family culture and parental styles. Children who have authoritarian parents, who are constantly criticized and who always carry out their responsibilities by taking orders, cannot internalize their intentions and cannot learn to control and regulate their inner world.
After discovering the causes of procrastination that we use frequently, the next step is to start actively managing our time. We can use various strategies to manage time efficiently. Some of these strategies are listed below. It should not be forgotten that the effectiveness of each strategy varies depending on the reason the person finds most suitable.
* We must divide the work into parts. It is a recommended method especially for people who procrastinate because they find work tiring and difficult. We can increase our control over the work by dividing our work into smaller and manageable parts.
* We should create a to-do list. This method is recommended for people who postpone their work because they cannot organize. When a "to do" list is prepared, we do not skip the boring and tiring parts of the job, but complete it.
* We should try to love the job we have to do, and not overestimate it. As I mentioned in my previous article, a person's predictions about the emotions he will feel in situations are not always accurate. Most of the time, we do not even feel the tension and distress we experience while thinking about doing the job. In the coming days, you will feel before starting the job that you find boring. Score your predictions about the negative emotions you think about out of 10. Also rate the emotions you actually felt after the task was completed and compare the two. In this way, you can see that things do not actually feel as bad as you think, and that you overestimate your responsibilities before carrying them out.
* We must choose times that will not be interrupted. It is the most suitable method for those who cannot return to work for hours after saying 'Let me check the phone'. We should try to fulfill our responsibilities in a time period that we are sure will not be interrupted by our family, friends and social media. When we're done, we'll definitely have time to look at Facebook notifications and accumulated messages.
* We must find our best time to perform the work. Everyone has a time during the day when they feel more dynamic and get more efficiency from their work. Some people are happier and more energetic when they wake up in the morning, while others like to work at night. We should determine the time during the day when you are most productive and try to do the work in that time period as much as possible.
* We must remember why we do what we do: We must remind ourselves of what 'That thing' that we deal with or will struggle with for hours, days, months is actually for. The answer we give will increase our motivation.
* We should keep a list of completed tasks and reward ourselves: If we write down the things we did at the end of each day, we can see how much we did that day. This method will increase our belief that we have the power within ourselves to do all our other accumulated work. Instead of postponing a job we do not enjoy, we should reward ourselves when we complete it using the necessary strategies. In this way, we reinforce our behavior.
You can make a new start every day when you are given the chance to open your eyes to life. You are now reading these tips to get over the past and maybe start over. And if you have read this far and finished this long article, you have already started.
Do not give up on yourself.
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