The Causes of Procrastination

To overcome chronic procrastination you must first understand the causes of procrastination, and there are many. One cause is the fear of failure or success, many procrastinators will get the difficulty of the work finished ahead of time and put it off instead of actually completing it. Another cause is overestimating the time you have left to complete the work that needs to be done. Another very common cause of procrastination is believing you have to be in the right mood to complete your work. Boredom can be a procrastinator’s worst enemy because it leads to distractions that prevent work to be completed. A fifth cause of procrastination is poor organizational skills, this can lead to a lack of motivation for the procrastinator to start doing necessary work.

Fear of Failure or Success

Many procrastinators feel they are not capable enough or competent to produce satisfactory work that comes to doing projects that have a deadline. They have a tendency to over analyze the amount of work that should go into completing something, instead of sitting down and doing the work they tend to spend most of their time on the preparation leading up to the work; whether it be research or different solutions. This fear of success or failure is a cause of procrastination that can be handled rather easily.

Overestimating Time

One of the biggest causes of procrastination is thinking that you have what seems like forever complete a project, then when the deadline slowly creeps up you realize that you had months to complete work in advance and now you only have weeks to do it. This overestimating of time is a problem with just about every type of procrastinator and one of the best ways to overcome the overestimating of time is to begin projects immediately after they are given, but for many procrastinators this is easier said than done.

Having To Be In The Right Mood

This cause of procrastination is the worst kind because the procrastinator believes that they should be in the right mood then whenever they have work to be completed, they decide if and when the mood strikes for them to complete or start the work. Usually for procrastinators they are never in the right mood to start anything they see as being time-consuming and difficult. The only way to correct this cause is improving the self-confidence of the procrastinator to handle the amount of work that needs to be done.

Boredom

A big cause of procrastination is simply boredom, many procrastinators become bored extremely easily. They can even become bored doing things that they normally love to do, boredom can kill any chance of a procrastinator starting and completing their work. Boredom can also lead to many distractions such as checking e-mail and surfing the Internet instead of getting the work done. There simply is no one answer to get rid of boredom because everyone gets bored at some point during the day, but for procrastinators they are usually bored most of the day.

Poor Organizational Skills

Another cause of procrastination is poor organizational skills. Procrastinators are generally terrible at organizing, their work area is usually a mess and they see their lack of organizational skills as a reason to put off doing work. To beat this type of procrastination you must find an organizational style that fits the type of worker you are and if you clean and organize your work area you will gain better self-confidence in your ability to not only get the work done but to manage time as well.

There are many more causes of procrastination, but these five are the worst. To overcome any cause of procrastination the procrastinator must have confidence in their ability to use their time constructively and to handle any task that must be done.