You May Be Procrastinating Due to Anxiety.
Procrastination may be the reason you are reading this post, but anxiety may be the reason why you procrastinate in the first place.
It took me a long time to start writing today: first I had to check all three of my email accounts, Twitter, Instagram, write to my dad about what I remembered, get a glass of water, and then check my email again. I’m pretty sure my procrastination habits are what keeps me from taking over the world. I’ll figure it out as soon as I google what year Julia Child was born.
For those of us who have a habit of procrastinating until later, especially when it comes to something important, this can be more than just “fooling around.” The tendency to procrastinate is linked to our brains’ fight-or-flight responses , according to a Quartz at Work article on how anxiety prevents us from completing important projects. Procrastination is a flight response in action. Here are some ways to find out if you’re worried – not lazy – and then get out of the hole.
Recognize the symptoms
Maybe you are feeling relaxed and enjoying the day when you ignore the laundry or other chores – great! This is probably not anxiety. Psychologist Andrew Rosen, founder and director of the Anxiety and Mood Disorder Treatment Center in Delray Beach, Florida, told Quartz at Work that you can tell it’s anxiety if you spend a lot of time rationalizing your behavior or even giving it up. you should be doing as pointless:
People are incredibly resourceful when it comes to finding ways to avoid this bad feeling, be it procrastination (“I’ll do it tomorrow”), distraction (“I’ll check Twitter first”), or sabotage (“You are a stupid idea anyway.” .) The latter is especially popular with analytical or mental people who may not even be aware of the extent to which fear influences their hyperrational reasons for abandoning dreams.
If you spend a lot of time procrastinating in your head justifying what you should be doing is silly, it may mean that you are uncomfortable with avoiding it.
Examine your excuses
While you are procrastinating, do it in a way that will help reduce your anxiety. If you’ve made lists of reasons why you can’t do something, take that list and add to a new list – one that tests the legitimacy of those excuses. Robin Yeganeh, assistant professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, found a great exercise for this:
“We often get into the bad habit of choosing actions that are more convenient than useful for us, based on ‘explaining the reasons,’” Yeganekh said. “For example,” I work hard so I don’t have to do X “or” I’m too tired to make progress in X “. My advice would be to list all the reasons for abandoning the higher priority behavior, and then question the veracity of each reason. Decide if these rules have led to success in life or if they need to be refined in favor of success-oriented reasons for making decisions. ”
It’s a gentle way of facing what you are doing: avoiding responsibility. Perhaps this will be enough to break out of this state, so that you can move on to what really needs to be done.
Explore Your Feelings
At the heart of all of this is the reason why you feel anxious at all. According to psychologist Leslie Connor, if you clean under the refrigerator to avoid a project that could lead to a promotion, something deeper is likely going on:
Every success comes with compromises – more openness, more pressure, less freedom – and ignoring the worry about it can bite us again.
“If we connect only with affirming feelings and suppress ambivalence or fears, they will come out. But sometimes they’ll knock on the door, ”Connor said.
And another important point: the fear of failure.
If you find that this is a persistent problem in your life, you may need to talk to a therapist about your concerns, because no one should live in this state, regardless of their obligations. But for some, acknowledging fears and anxieties may be the beginning of breaking the cycle of procrastination.