Lotta Lehmusvuori’s blog
Let’s be honest for a moment. We all procrastinate sometimes. It’s just so easy to say “I’ll take care of that tomorrow”. But as you know, you won’t take care of it tomorrow. It’s just a lie you tell yourself to justify not taking care of it right away.
It’s true that you can’t do everything at once and you must think of a smart way to use your precious time, especially when it comes to tasks related to school or work life. But sometimes we have all the time in the world yet we get nothing done! We just come up with even the most ridiculous excuses to avoid doing something we’d rather not do. And more than often the tasks are very simple and would require almost no time at all, but they become these horror images in our minds and we try to avoid them at all cost.
I must confess, I do this all the time. If there’s something I’d rather not do, I just come up with a wide variety of excuses and other activities. Usually I try to avoid writing essays. That’s because when I start writing, I can’t stop until the text is done. And writing texts can take forever if you’re a perfectionist like me. So, whenever I’ve got to write an essay, I find myself avoiding writing it with excuses such as: “I should clean my room” or “my closet isn’t organized enough”. Then I spend hours organizing my closet and drawers and so on and so on and before I know it my room is cleaner than it has ever been and I haven’t even started my essay.
The real problem I have is with tasks that don’t have a deadline. See, starting a healthier lifestyle is indeed harder when there’s no one yelling “if you don’t get this done by Friday, you’ll fail this class!” over your shoulder.
So, why is procrastinating a problem and why do we do it? And how can we stop doing it?
Well, procrastinating is a problem especially for students because if you don’t get the tasks done now, you’ll get a load of tasks to do in other subjects as well. In the end, you’ll just have a bunch of unfinished tasks and a lot of stress to go with them. And as we all know, stress isn’t good for your physical or mental health.
I think the main reason for procrastination is the will to avoid uncomfortable situations. See, writing an essay might feel uncomfortable, so you avoid it at all cost. Procrastination might start off small: first you avoid taking care of small and unimportant tasks for a short amount of time. And then it gets worse – you can’t get anything done in time and you’re drowning in things you’re supposed to get done.
When it comes to how we can stop procrastinating, I think there’s no simple answer. Everyone’s different so it’s hard to say what it would take for you to stop procrastinating. But I can give you a tip that I find useful when trying to get things done in time: schedules. Seriously though. Making a schedule should give you an idea of how you should spend your time. Although, following your schedule is a whole other story.
I wish you the best of luck trying to avoid procrastinating!
Lotta Lehmusvuori
