4 Common Reasons Why People Procrastinate – and a Cure for Each One

The world today offers a million and one distractions. With the rise of smartphones and high-speed internet, it has become so much easier to lose focus at work and end up procrastinating.

But getting distracted is not the only reason why people end up putting off their work for tomorrow or even later. Here are 4 common reasons why people procrastinate — and a cure for each one.

You don’t like what you’re doing.

Doing a challenging task is difficult, but doing a task that you hate is next to impossible. When faced with something that you don’t like doing, keeping yourself motivated can be extremely difficult. You’ll find it easy to think of ways to keep yourself from finishing up the task, and you will likely end up putting it off for another day.

The cure: reward yourself.

Combining an unpleasant task with the idea of a reward can be immensely helpful when it comes to motivating yourself. If you’re itching to watch a movie, tell yourself that you can watch it after you’ve finished your task. This way, you’ll have something to look forward to.

You don’t want to fail.

The potential of failure can be a huge demotivator for a lot of people. Some tend to put off work because they’re afraid that they won’t be able to pull off a particular task successfully. In the end, this only leads them to procrastinating and churning out an even less commendable output than if they faced the task head on.

The cure: accept that mistakes happen.

It’s normal to be wary of failure, but remember that the only thing you can about it is to do your best. Don’t let your fear of failure cripple your professional life or any other aspect of your life for that matter. Just strive to produce the best results you can, and your employers will surely recognize your efforts.

You feel overwhelmed.

When the tasks just keep on coming, it can be tempting to just throw up your hands in surrender and forget about your responsibilities. Feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things you have to accomplish is a very common reason why many virtual assistants procrastinate. Instead of facing your duties, you probably want to forget them for a while and do them when you have more time and energy. Unfortunately, this time rarely ever comes.

The cure: take one step at a time.

You don’t have to complete all your tasks in one day. The key is to take things slowly but surely. Divide up your tasks into smaller, more manageable pieces so that you won’t feel stressed out. When you see yourself slowly ticking things off your checklist, you’ll feel more confident about finishing up your tasks.

You want everything to be perfect.

Being a perfectionist has its advantages. In most cases, this helps you churn out impeccable results. Unfortunately, this can also result in you taking a lot more time than usual to finish each task. If you want to things to be perfect down to the smallest (often insignificant) detail, you’ll end up procrastinating and losing sight of the big picture.

The cure: learn to compromise.

Foregoing your perfectionist tendencies doesn’t mean that you’ll end up submitting subpar work. It just means that you’ll do the best you can do within a reasonable amount of time. In most cases, you won’t even miss anything vital when you lessen the time you spend on each task.

Knowing the reason why you’re procrastinating is essential to solving your problem. Once you’ve singled out the reason why you’re putting things off for later, you can make use of the tips above to try and solve the issue.