You don’t know what you don’t know.

When you are planning, you may assume you know everything that is going to happen. No, you don’t. A procrastinator makes this assumption and delays the task. But, he always faces new kinds of delays and problems and hence cannot meet the deadline.

You don’t know what you don’t know. And to tackle what you don’t know you just need to be ready and prepared. That can only happen through discipline.

Why Procrastinators are not disciplined? – Procrastinator’s Instant Gratification

Procrastinators are addicted to instant gratification and hence most of the times they are onto constant distractions such as YouTube videos, online shopping, chats, reading unnecessary articles etc. that give instant gratification second to second or instant gratification can be received by delaying pain. Every minute of delayed pain is pleasure and instant gratification.

Most tasks that we do in our life have a longer gratification cycle. Therefore, a procrastinator’s subconscious mind sees these tasks as a ‘defeat of the purpose of instant gratification’. As the mind sees the task as a defeat, it tries to avoid the task whenever possible and hence the procrastinator doesn’t want to start on the task proactively – ‘why get defeated, when you don’t need to be’. And when the task deadline comes closer, there is more fear and anxiety around the task, causing a certain sense of hatred towards the task and a below par performance on the task. The procrastination is caused by the fear/anxiety of not being instantly gratified or the fear of possible failure (personally or socially) or the anxiety about starting something new. All these three reasons are not good reasons to procrastinate a task, but procrastinating this pain gives instant gratification. Instant

Why is awareness and faith important in breaking procrastination?

Awareness of this behavior can help the procrastinator recognize and come out of this situation. The only way to break away from procrastination is to have some faith in rational decision making and follow it. I understand that a procrastinator’s mind wouldn’t allow proactive and rational decision making, but a procrastinator should take a leap of faith and start working rationally for a few days.

One of the best ways I found is to wake up early morning  and do the most difficult or the most important task that you want to be done in the next 2-3 days. It is important to be aware of the most important/difficult task and then think about it early morning while the rest of the world is sleeping. This helps you to structure the problem and then proceed to solve the problem slowly. Once this is done, you gain more confidence and happiness for the rest of your day. A procrastinator will find it very difficult to do this from a rational standpoint and hence he/she has to take a leap of faith and do it and check the results after a few days. It is impossible to believe that this is going to benefit the procrastinator before adhering to this behavior and hence I use the word ‘faith’ instead of belief. Belief is more about the fact that you believe in it, whereas faith is a belief or practice that you don’t know why you believe in or do it. It is only after you practice the faith for a few days that you can see the changes. Breaking away from procrastination is done similarly.