Procrastination comes with its own grave dangers. The dangers of procrastination are enormous. One common truth about procrastination is that it is an enemy of success. It is a thief of time, and time is of great essence in life. It is very harmful to success in so many ways. In areas of self-development, career development, and otherwise, it is a threat to success. Like I did say in my last post Procrastination is a chain we all must endeavor to break away from. Now, without much ado let us examine the dangers of procrastination.
Becoming a ‘Trailer’
Among the dangers of procrastination is the problem of becoming a ‘trailer’. While growing up one important piece of advice parents always give their children is that they should grow up with their peers. Children were told always to progress and succeed with their mates and never to be left behind. This advice kept us going as it helped us to take seriously every challenge and responsibility that will enable us to succeed in life. So as much as we could we avoided procrastination so that we will not be left behind.
Procrastination has a way of playing pranks on people, especially the youths. Young people will always think that they are full of energy and they have the whole time on earth. So instead of taking responsibility for success they will always defer or delay them.
My advice is to never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time – Charles Dickens.
One problem with procrastination is that any time stolen or wasted can never be recovered in life. And that once you are left behind by your peers you will trail while they become trailblazers. Moreover, you will play the second fiddle as long as success is concerned.
Procrastination hinders Productivity
In the world of success, productivity is measured by our ability to achieve set goals and objectives. Hence, one of the dangers of procrastination is that our inability to achieve set goals hurts our productivity and renders us redundant while negatively affecting our success.
The logic is that each time we take responsibility we ascertain our productivity and also take a bold step towards success. But on the contrary, if we hesitate to take responsibility we are delaying achieving our set goals as well as prolonging our success.
Sense of Unfulfillment
Procrastination results in unfulfillment. It sparks the feeling of unfulfillment when one compares self with those that are setting the pace. Doing so might expose your inadequacies and deficiencies and eventually leads to an inferiority complex a situation where you conclude that others are better off than you. You will then see yourself as not good enough compared to other people. The inability to achieve set goals will make such people see themselves as inadequate and live with a sense of guilt. This might affect performance negatively.
Procrastination if left unchecked can degenerate into a grasshopper mentality. Grasshopper mentality no doubt comes with unmitigated disasters. It inhibits you from making attempts at success Hence, you are unable to put your ability and talents to test. It also leads to retrogression, and stagnation, and makes you accept defeat without making effort to redeem your situation. Above all, it keeps you in perpetual fear of the unknown.
Lose of Interest
Procrastination might also cause one to lose interest in life. This may lead to the abandonment of set goals and objectives, and the person might also want to opt-out of his or her dreams and visions. Procrastination hurts our emotions and poses a grave risk to our health. Struggling to meet up with dateline for delayed or postponed tasks might be too much for us to bear. It may lead to stress, depression, psychological or emotional trauma, nervous breakdown, etc
Eventually, regret will set in, and you will begin to ask yourself probing questions like; how did it happen? How did I find myself in this precarious situation? I have seen someone lose interest in pursuing his life’s dream of becoming a software programmer just because he couldn’t meet up with the dateline for the completion of the course. He blatantly told us that he is not good and will not make it as a programmer. How did it begin – procrastination? It is possible he was procrastinating about his studies delaying responsibilities. Be wise, shun procrastination today and avoid its dangers.
HOW TO DEAL WITH PROCRASTINATION
Set Realistic Goals
You must set goals that you can achieve within a given time frame if you must deal with procrastination. Such a goal must be unambiguous, realistic, and achievable. Sometimes, procrastination is not a result of bad time management but more a result of the nature of goals and objectives you set for yourself – whether such a goal is achievable within the time frame allotted to it or not.
For your information when a goal is unrealistic a situation arises where one keeps on delaying and postponing to a later date. A good goal encourages you to take prompt action, and achieve your set goals at a good turnaround time. Ask yourself, can I achieve these goals within a given time frame? If the answer is no, the goals are unrealistic and must be revisited. Revisit and re-evaluate your goals. Make them as realistic as possible. It is better to succeed gradually than to slip into the danger of procrastination.
Set your Priorities Right
Setting your priorities right is all about planning well. Good planning will help to curb the problem of procrastination. Ask yourself, what are those tasks that are very important to me? List them down; let them come first in the order of preference. You need to allot more time to very important ones. For instance, if your study is important to you don’t use the time for your studies to watch movies. Or if you have an appointment to keep don’t postpone it because you want to entertain visitors. You will always have enough time to entertain your visitors. Many have lost opportunities of becoming successful because they did not set their priorities right.
This action will enable you to be focused and deal with the problem of distraction, which is a major cause of procrastination. Setting your priorities right will help you to take responsibility one at a time. When you are focused you will not try to do everything at the same time. You will only focus on the most important tasks that matter to you.
Self Discipline
In order to deal with the problem of procrastination, you must exhibit a high level of self-discipline. By self-discipline I mean a high level of self restrain or self-control over habits that lead to procrastination. You must summon the will to say no to such habits. Let’s say someone’s health is at risk because of addiction, it will take a high level of self-discipline or restraint to suppress the strong urge for such substance when it comes. Not until such a person shows some restraint to the abuse of such substance, he or she will keep on procrastinating about stopping it. Such a person will eventually live in danger of a life-threatening ailment.
Let’s look at another illustration. Suffice it to say you are preparing for exams and your friends come up with the idea of going to the club. You must dare to resist the urge to oblige their request. At first, this might seem very challenging for you but with a few more times of self restrain and discipline it becomes a habit. And with time you will learn how to counter procrastination by not deferring your goals again.
Be Adventurous
When I say adventurous I mean being curious in your approach to achieving your goals. In fairy tales, they say curiosity kills the cat but in the realm of success curiosity opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Curiosity is a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and deep learning.
Curious people always ask questions and search for answers in their minds. Through curiosity, you are able to explore new grounds on problem-solving techniques. Curiosity helps you to deal squarely with the problem of procrastination as it increases the zeal and eagerness to find a solution for the task at hand instead of delaying and postponing it to a later date
In conclusion, take note of this, if you must keep a date with success, then deal with every form of procrastination.