Behavioural Procrastination Pattern
For those of you who completed the Procrastination Survey, your results will indicate which of the 14 Procrastination Patterns you need the most improvement in.
Behavioural Procrastinators tend to have excellent “big picture thinking”, have the ability to create outstanding plans and organizational skills; however, the difficulty lies in the “doing”.
The behavioural procrastinator gets right to the brink of implementation but waits for inspiration to kick in. Planning is the fun part, the doing is the dreaded part.
Ask yourself the following questions to get a better idea of your procrastination challenge in this area:
Avoidance: What do you typically do to avoid getting started?
Justification: What do you tell yourself to justify why you are not getting started?
Actions: What actions can you take to follow through and get started?
Some Words of Advice…
Avoidance Strategies: people typically find themselves either doing very unpleasant things like cleaning up their living space or fun things like watching TV or playing video games.
Try This: once you have figured out what you are doing that contributes to your procrastination, work it into your action plan. You will work better if you are “permitted” to have some fun in balance with getting your work done.
Justification: often people are fearful of getting started for many reasons such as failure, dislike for feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where to begin.
Try This…The best thing that you can do with a college assignment is to create the study space, gather the tools that you need, open your books and get started with a “brain dump”. Just start writing everything that you need to get done for this assignment (list), what information your already know and create an outline. Allow yourself a break once you have done this. Get it out of your head, let your brain relax, do something fun and then get back to it now that you know the map.
Actions: Sometimes you just need to shut off your thoughts and the focus on how unpleasant this assignment will be to finish and just get going. Work first, get it done so that you can really enjoy yourself. Create the rough copy and come back to it later with “fresh eyes” and a rested brain.
Next Week’s Procrastination Topic: Social Procrastination
I look forward to hearing from you!
Dr. Heather Drummond, EdD Counselling Psychology
Success Coach * Professor * Counsellor
Mohawk College, Fennel Campus, The Square – C102/20