Wikipedia defines Anxiety as a psychological and physiological state characterized by cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components. These components combine to create an unpleasant feeling that is typically associated with uneasiness, fear, or worry.

When talking about procrastination, anxiety is that feeling that grips you when you begin thinking about undertaking that important project or assignment in your life. You might feel it anywhere in your body such as in the stomach, neck, leg, hand, jaws, etc …..everyone feels it differently.

It is that feeling you might have that might want you to go to sleep, watch TV, or do something that is more relaxing than undertaking your project. It is a feeling that can cause you to feel weak in your body and you feel like fainting. Anxiety is a type of fear. It’s a more subtle, relatively low focused form of fear. When anxious, you may not even be fully aware of what you’re anxious about. You just feel it, and still can’t put your finger on what it is that is wrong.

But if you want, you can decide to be honest to yourself and ask yourself why you keep on postponing your assignments. You might discover you are afraid of failing, being rejected, not being perfect, or afraid of getting out of your comfort zone. (Afraid of succeeding or the pressure that comes with moving to the next level in life)

Your mind in most cases will not permit you any chance to ponder on why you are anxious. All it’s worried about is to find a solution to give you a temporary relief from that anxious feeling. The relief is THE PROMISE that the important tasks will be undertaken at a later time.

This promise will not get any work done, but it will surely make you feel better and at ease. As you can see, your mind is simply deceiving you to feel better by procrastinating. Trouble is, the clock is always ticking and when the time comes for you to take action and implement those important projects, you begin suffering again from those feelings in your body, you feel crippled and overwhelmed. So what do you do to feel better and get rid of those anxious feelings in you? You rewrite history by re-promising yourself you will do it another time in the near future. So you carry on procrastinating so as to feel better. You keep going through the cycle again and again.

As you know; all assignments and projects have deadlines. So what happens when the deadline approaches? You begin to panic, you feel out of control, you speak negatively about yourself and feel so disappointed by you. You see yourself as a loser and as someone who can’t complete anything in life.

The promises you used to give yourself about completing your projects at a later time will stop bringing you an reliefs. The only option you have is to either work quickly under pressure and you still run the risk of making mistakes and not being able to complete your projects. If you want to be successful lets say in business, that’s not the way forward. You will destroy your reputation and you will not be trusted by any parties involved in your business endeavors. You lose credibility and you might end up broke.

For you to progress, you’ll need to break this anxiety based cycle, otherwise you’ll continue to procrastinate to get temporary reliefs. Tell yourself: this isn’t so hard, it won’t take long, and I am sure that I know how to do it, or that I can learn while I’m doing it. It’s all about ignoring those feelings and positively affirming that you are capable to undertake and complete the task at hand. Last but not least, get started as early and as soon as possible.

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“Nothing Is So Fatiguing As The Eternal Hanging On of An Uncompleted Task.” – William James

Procrastination is a behavior of putting things off to a later date or time. Procrastinators usually say; “I have enough time, I will do this and that later on”

How many times have you ever wanted to write your book, your article or even a letter to someone and you rescheduled it for another time in the near future? How many times have you ever tried to call someone and you kept on believing there is enough time in the future to do so? Procrastinators reschedule their “now tasks” to implement them in the future such as; reading an important book, completing an important assignment, doing some homework on time, spending time with kids, body exercise, spending time with loved ones, etc

You make lists upon list of all the things you’re going to do in the near future. But when that future time comes to present, instead of you implementing those tasks, you look for something else to do like:

• Checking your emails
• Deciding to watch TV
• Deciding to do some laundry
• Playing solitaire or free cell games
• Surfing the web looking for a new product
• Calling someone to have a general chat or talk about someone
• Looking for additional information to read from the Internet as if you don’t have much to read
• Etc

And then . . . “Oh, God there is not enough time to do this and that!, Oh well, I have to do it tomorrow now”

Tomorrow comes. What happens? History repeats itself. What a waste if you ask me. Procrastinators tell lies to themselves. Such as, “I’ll feel more like doing this tomorrow.” Or “I work best under pressure.” But in fact they do not get the urge the next day to do something.

Procrastinators actively look for distractions, particularly ones that don’t take a lot of commitment on their part. Procrastinators sabotage themselves. They put obstacles in their own path. They actually choose paths that hurt their performance.

Procrastination holds someone back or can I say it keeps you back in the past. There is no improvement from procrastination, things remain the same waiting for you to change them. The future has no JOY because of procrastination. Procrastination for real is a thief of time, energy and self-esteem. But we not only aide this theft, we ENCOURAGE it! And when we finally do get around to the fundamental tasks, we’re exhausted, guilt-ridden and stressed out.

There is no success in the future if you entertain procrastination in the present.

Like so many things, procrastination is not an untamable beast. It is a habit that has some specific origin, and it is a habit that you can overcome. It is not something you should habitat in your life, but get rid of it to enjoy a good quality life without worries that comes from pondering on missed opportunities.

There are many ways to avoid success in life, but the most sure-fire way to fail is procrastination. – Simon Preacher

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One of our greatest resources in our daily lives is TIME. It seems as if we never have enough of it and it appears to pass so quickly. The thing is, we won’t get any more of it and we can’t slow it down.

The only way you can maximize your time is to make the most of it. If you put a strategy in place, you will do more with your TIME than living it to chance to dictate how you should operate throughout your day.

Let’s look at some of the simple steps we can implement to maximize our TIME effectively.

Pre-Planning

Pre-planning simply mean – Planning in advance. Whatever you are doing today, would’ve been planned yesterday. Before you live your office or before you go to bed, plan for tomorrow and be specific with your times as well. Don’t just be vague when you write down your tasks; be specific by setting time limits. This helps you to avoid wasting time early in the day as you might probably procrastinate thinking there is plenty of time during the day to do such and such. This is how you can write down your tasks for tomorrow:

1. To Finish Task A by 10am by doing a, b, c, d
2. To Finish Task B by 3pm by doing a, b, c, d, e

Pull together all the information you’ll need, phone numbers and relevant paperwork. This really does help. You will work up energized knowing that everything has been pre-planned before and you know exactly what you need to do. Don’t forget to set aside time for any hindrances that might come your way tomorrow.

Prioritizing Your Tasks

Make sure you prioritize your list and start with the most productive tasks or the important tasks. Concentrate on higher value tasks and then work down to lower value ones. Many people get trapped here. They usually concentrate the other way round and at the end of the day, they discover, they didn’t do much because the tasks they implemented were not the most productive ones. One key reason why prioritizing works, and works well, is the 80/20 Rule. The 80/20 Rule states that 80 percent of our typical activities contribute less than 20 percent to the value of our work.

Self Discipline

Yes, you need to be totally disciplined. This means you should stick to your guns. Be a person of your word. Honor yourself and your word. Stick to your list – Tick off each task as you go and don’t let yourself be distracted. There are so many distractions throughout the day. Maybe some emails or phone calls that do not bring value to your day. You might need to set up time for that. Setting time limits will help you not spending time arguing with other people when you could be implementing your daily tasks. You can even make an agreement with yourself to check for messages every two hours or so. Stick to the plan.

Outsource

Depending with what you do in life, you can’t do all things by yourself. So try to find the right person to do the things you are not good at doing. Or delegate some of your tasks to someone you can train to do them. And remember – “Only do it if only you can do it.” If you can’t, outsource the activities to someone who is capable.

Measure Performance

Measuring performance offers an effective method of determining whether you’re meeting your daily goals and achieving your desired results. Be honest with yourself – Keep asking – “Is what I’m doing now getting me to where I want to get to?” if the answer is “no,” change what you’re doing.

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