Procrastinators avoid doing important tasks, often until the last minute, giving less important but more enjoyable tasks priority over unpleasant tasks. Do you put off making important decisions until the last minute or never at all?
If so, you are in the presence of many procrastinators. You could be wasting time unnecessarily and making yourself look bad amongst your peers as you continually miss deadlines through procrastination. This reluctance to do important tasks or to make important decisions can also add to your stress levels by constantly putting off important decisions and tasks until the last minute.
However, procrastination is not all bad. When you are faced by a very important task or decision, not working on it straight away results in less time being available for the decision/task. This can lead to increased focus and an increase in energy levels and enthusiasm as you know the task has to be done by a tight deadline. This can be preferable to commencing the task/project when you feel uncomfortable or dread what is involved. In Fridays blog we saw that as a result of Sweden introducing a 6-hour workday, productivity levels increased dramatically as in general, happy workers are more productive workers. Finally, sometimes it is good to step back from an important project, see the whole picture and procrastination can actually get the creative juices flowing.
On the other hand, chronic procrastination can be a major problem as many chronic procrastinators will ignore tasks unless they have a specific deadline and will always choose pleasure over pain, often leaving important tasks too late in the day to complete, leading to inferior outcomes.
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