Why Procrastination is Worse Than You Think

We all procrastinate, we all delay and put off tasks we can’t be bothered to do. But what if procrastinating was causing more damage than simply wasting time?

I was thinking about snoozing your alarm, and how on the surface it may look harmless, however, it can actually be quite a depressing decision to make. 

When you wake up and decide to snooze the alarm, you’re doing more than just getting an extra shut eye.

You’re choosing sleep over starting the day, in other words, you’re actively deciding to be unconscious instead of facing the discomfort of leaving your warm, comfortable bed.

Are you so incapable of handling whatever your day has in store that unconsciousness is the better option?

Now, think of this compounded over time. How are you going to believe that you can do anything if the first decision you make on a daily basis is comfort?

Similarly, any task that you procrastinate, you’re admitting to yourself that the difficulty of the task, or at the very least the discomfort of it, is bad enough that it’s worth temporarily forgetting about and wasting time for.

Procrastination is an admission of weakness.

The task needs doing anyway, and you’re going to get it done regardless of when, so deciding to push it back and waste time only causes you to suffer twice, you still go through the pain of doing the task, but now you just give yourself more time to dread doing it.

There’s loads of tips out there talking about how to stop procrastinating, but the truth is, once you see the bigger decision you’re making, stopping it should be easy.

Here’s the best tip to stop procrastinating: Don’t.

If you were forced to eat a frog every single day, the best time to do so would be first thing in the morning, so you can enjoy the rest of your day completely frogless.

When you practice getting uncomfortable tasks out of the way for long enough, you change the way the brain reacts to them. Soon, you’ll actually find that procrastinating is the more uncomfortable option, and avoiding it no longer becomes a conscious decision.

I used to procrastinate everything, now, I unpack my suitcase the moment I step through the door because I can’t think of anything worse than having it lingering in the back of my mind.