Causes of Procrastination

Procrastination is delaying or deferring an action to a later time. In many cases, this is habitual. No one likes to procrastinate consciously, but it happens. It happens by delaying one action at a time. Over a period of several days, we defer many actions. Over course of months, the habit of procrastination takes over. People who procrastinate, defer most of the type of actions. They may be important tasks but those that are not urgent. These are mostly the ones that get deferred. Some may be in the habit of delaying the important and urgent tasks also.

The most common cause of procrastination is laziness. Due to laziness, or sloth, we do not want to do something. Every act requires some initiative, some effort from our side. If we loathe to take the initiative, then, we postpone the job to some other time. Most of the times, we allow ourselves to be run by our feelings and emotions. And if we do not feel like doing something, we submit to that feeling and do not do it. We do something else. This breeds procrastination.

We should not allow ourselves to be ruled by our feelings. We have to do what we have to do whether we feel like doing it or not.

If we keep doing what we feel like doing, then most of the things will remain undone. Comfort breeds laziness and our comfortable life has brought in oodles of laziness into our lives. It has soaked through our skin, seeped into our body and has clogged our veins and arteries. It makes us feel like not doing anything. We feel jaded and numb in the face of anything that has to be done. Hence, we have to kill this laziness. We have to exorcise this demon from our mind and body so as to heal the disease of procrastination.

The other cause of procrastination is fear. It may be the fear of failure which stops one from doing something. Or it can be the fear of embarrassment due to the failure that stops one from doing something. Fear a very powerful. It has been developed by nature so as to protect us. But the same protection mechanism sometimes becomes a barrier for us in doing something and taking action. many a times, we shortchange ourselves due to our own fear.

We do not attempt something. We do not go the full throttle. We remain fearful and in turn, we do not achieve what we could have otherwise achieved. We need to understand that victory is in overcoming the fear. Once we realize that, we feel lighter and energized. And we will not feel like procrastinating.

Sometimes greed may be the root cause of procrastination. This is a very subtle cause and very difficult to identify. Greed may sometimes stop someone from buying even essential things. Even if the person knows that the need is there to buy it, due to greed for money, he may keep postponing his buying action. Here I am not talking of the person who does not have the resources to buy the thing of desire. Here the person has enough resources, but being of a miser mentality, he is unwilling to part with his money and postpones his action.

Indecisiveness is also one of the causes of procrastination. In many cases, we are bombarded by so many choices that we become quite confused on our need itself. Without a clear parameter on which to evaluate our choice, we remain indecisive and hence keep postponing our action.