EAT THAT FROG; By Victory Okungbowa

 

Procrastination; they say is the thief of time and some will say it's the thief of life as they believe life is counted in time. Procrastination is the habit of carrying out the less urgent tasks in preference to the more urgent ones, or doing the more pleasurable things in place of the less pleasurable ones, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time, sometimes we push them to the last minute and if possible to "never".

I will share with you few reasons why we (note 'WE' because we are all guilty of it one time or the other) procrastinate and the side effect it has to our dreams and to our aspirations.

Reasons for procrastination are; Lack of interest, Lack of motivation, Fear of failure, Fear of success, Excessive perfectionism, Lack of focus. The most surprising of all is 'Fear of success', you will wonder if we fear success, yes i will say, and we are sometimes scared by the size of our dreams, but remember this quote "If your dream doesn't scare you, your dream isn't big enough".

Now, knowing what causes it, i think the next thing is finding the way to shut that door.

Here are some ways, not in a particular order;

Block out distractions: Ensure you have a road-map to your destination and be ready to follow that path no matter how rough or uneasy it may look and be ready to stay through and not lowering your standard or values, most times we want to go for the nearest easy alternatives when we are faced with some difficulties on the way to fulfillment and we often call it 'flexibility'.

Embrace Imperfection.

Know yourself- know how procrastination affects your life, think about the habits that often cause it.

Practice effective time management.

Be realistic- Set reasonable targets to measure achievements.

Self-talk positively- Replace all negative talks with positive ones, note  that i didn't say 'take away' but said replace, meaning you put a positive talk as you make effort to get rid of the negative ones.

Let me also say that lack of definition is another biggest friend to your procrastination demon and the answer to that is to plan and schedule rather than giving yourself an unspecified length of time to perform an unspecified task, give  yourself a limited amount of time to work on a clearly defined task.

The Ugly Mind Tricks.

Our minds often trick us into postponing and procrastination often to the  point that we don't realize we are procrastinating at all. One way this plays out is that we scan our to-do list, skipping over the big challenging projects in favor short, easy projects. We tends to push the bigger ones forward and forward and still forward and forward again, stop the pushing and eat that ugly frog now.

Eat that Frog: Written By Victory Titi Okungbowa