probably you know when i became a psychologist i thought i'd be spending all my time in there the therapy room unfortunately i'm in the spending a lot of time in here and one of my doing in here health insurance forms tax and making appointments for people and the ever popular bookkeeping because i don't enjoy any of these activities tend to put them on the trouble with putting things off is that once you do late you tend to want to delay it either or it's kind of like a snowball rolling downhill used to seem bigger and bigger as it goes down work you know procrastination is a problem that most of us experience at one time or another you know my friend steve it vanderbilt the highest standardized score of any of us you would think that he would have moved ahead of us and gone much faster through the program but in reality what happened was he procrastinated he couldn't finish his essays he couldn't finish his thesis or even his take home exams if they required any writing while he stayed behind to try to finish things the rest of us move ahead that's progress the nation want to date moved away repressed a nation also reduces the pressure cooker function it offers a great excuse for a lackluster result after all if you only started studying yesterday for the exam how can you expect yourself to get a it's an easy way out some people actually fear doing well believe it or not a promotion might mean that you have to move to another city or you might lose the the friends you now have if you do get that job then again you might have to learn new skills and you might be unsure that you may also have to work in an environment that's very i know you other people so need to feel popular that they actually sabotage themselves in order to feel like one of the crowd they may not try to quiet hard enough so as to maintain their popularity people who procrastinate often come from families where praise was helped because it was then believed that if you praised kids they become conceited criticism and so called constructive feedback were the only things to look forward to when a child completed a task  you know what happens with these children is that they grow up getting themselves to get things done by having a lot of negative self talk they'll say things to themselves like if you don't get this paper done you're going to be in a lot of trouble or why haven't you gotten this room clean any idiot could have gotten it clean by now as an adult procrastinators do the same thing too there's a lot of negative self talk instead of coaching themselves through it they'd be right themselves ahead of time they say you know if we don't get this report done you're we're going to be fired or they'll say i'm an idiot for not doing this what's wrong with me anybody could offend is this by and by using this negative self talk they do get the job done eventually but at a lower cost to themselves they feel pretty rotten and it begins to set up a pattern where every time there's a new task to complete reddit and one of the reasons they dread it is all this negative self talk they know that they're going to in front of his nose that's what you need is a carrot the next time you have a task to do one particularly that you may dread promise yourself that you if you get a certain amount of it done your reward yourself afterwards go do something nice for yourself take a bubble bath tell yourself you'll buy a new lipstick or a new tie or even that you'll just take a walk on a nice afternoon a lot of times we get bogged down when we're not giving ourselves any rewards and the more we push ourselves the more we want to procrastinate so try pulling give yourself something to look forward to and don't demand that you do it all at once but a little s many procrastinators work just endlessly without getting anything done how can you work for hours and then and yet accomplish very little of the problem is usually that you're not scheduling enough time away from the job if you push yourself too hard for too long you'll find yourself feeling resentful and when you feel resentful your job performance is going to suffer or you may not even get the job done at all if you want to avoid becoming resentful about your task make sure that you schedule breaks for yourself it could be anything such as going to a movie or spending a little time with a friend but if you do this you'll find that not only can you get the job but you'll get it done better as well something else that you might want to do if you really want to keep the crowds to nation have it is to change the way you talk to yourself about putting things off a lot of times we tend to say to ourselves i've got to get this form done this is two things number one it creates a sense of panic and number two it feels a little uncomfortable because we're treating ourself this is there were children who must obey that's not a pleasant feeling at all and you might end up feeling quite rebellious you don't want to set up that kind of reset the rebellion it yourself instead of saying i got to get this form done try saying i choose to get this formed because i want the rewards to follow by phrasing it this way you're reminding yourself that you could choose not to do this task if you're willing to go without the rewards that come with completing it this way you give yourself a feeling of choice and you don't tend to feel so pushed and panicky you know worry has two parts one is just the statement of anxiety but the second part is a plan to do something about the inside most people don't get beyond that first part what you need to do if you're worried about something is devise a plan that will reduce your risk as much as possible if you have a large project look at it carefully then break it down into small manageable segments once you've done this go back look at your calendar and schedule in each segment to be accomplished and specific time be careful not to work on too much and you want time scheduling segments in this manner breaks down the huge scary project and makes it a lot more feasible  procrastinators feel that they have to excel at every test they face as one of the the reasons that they put things off they have such high standards for performance confident individuals have numerous interests if they do poorly on one task they remind themselves of their confidence on other t as a single mother working my way through graduate school i relied on my feelings of competence as a mother to bolster my confidence when i began to worry about great hike was when i realized i feel my daughter in some way which did happen from time to time i reassured myself that after all i was working very hard and was bound to mess up occasionally this helped me feel less guilty and better able to make a mint as a parent you know another reason why people for kristen age is the fear that they will do something that isn't perfect you may find that you yourself have had something like this happen it could be about anything it could be a school report it could be taxes it could be organizing your closet whatever it is that you're procrastinating on you may want to examine what kind of standards you're holding yourself to sometimes a person let's say they're writing a paper will start out sitting down at a typewriter or a computer they'll look at the blank piece of paper or the blank screen and they will become lately intimidated they can't start and so they get up and they sharpen pencils and get a cup of coffee and just the light and you know the see i've certainly had it happen to myself there's only one way to beat that that i found and that is to set out to do a mediocre or even poor job you know sometimes you've examined yourself and you've tried to figure out what is it this keeping me from doing this thing you don't think it's a fear failure and you're in you're not sure you're sabotaging yourself but you just can't get started what if you have papers do what if you have deadlines for getting financial records and what if there are some really pressing things that you are just not doing how can you find out what the real problem is well you know one thing i often suggest that people do is sit down and try to listen to the voices inside your head we all have different voices whether it's from our parents from our early years or what have you are perfectionistic voices are angry voices so it's good to sit down with a nice cup of tea relax have a piece of paper and a pencil handy and tried to listen for what you're getting out of procrastinating sometimes this is hard you say to yourself i'm not getting anything i am going to flunk out of graduate school if i do not do this or i am not going to get my high school diploma if i keep delaying whatever it is there's probably something that you're getting out of it maybe you are able to feel that you're more popular maybe you're able to feel that people are going to like you more that your people won't put you off because you haven't gone beyond your peer group on the other hand maybe there's a part of you inside that doesn't even want what your goal is i've seen this happen with a lot of student sometimes procrastination is really a resistance in disguise by this i mean that there could be a part of you that does not feel able to go through with what you're doing it's not that it's willing or doesn't want the goal that you're for sewing it's that some part of you is just have to provide a failure and give you a good example i had a friend years ago who said that she wanted to be a nurse more than anything in the world champ two small children and she was tired of staying at home so she said theresa will you help me i want to apply for nursing school i thought it was a great idea because i knew she'd been kind of down staying at home with the kids she really did want to get out and work again well i went with her to the nursing school and together we got the nursing school application it was only about two pages it wasn't you know very tedious and so she took it home and said she'd fill it out i was very excited for now after a couple weeks i called her she still had not fill that out so i said w help you she said sure some time and then after a while she says she didn't call me she still didn't do it i started getting more frustrated you've probably been in the situation like this too where you're really trying to help somebody do something which they say they want to do but they're not doing their part oh i ended up getting so mad at her but finally i had to realize that there was something else going on after about i'd say it was about six weeks i said tony have you still not done that nursing school application the deadline is this week she said no but i found out i'm pregnant again so it doesn't matter i think that says it all she didn't like having the two children she did i mean she loved her kids the she did not like staying at home with them and now she was going to have a third well there was a part of tony that was absolutely terrified of failure she didn't feel that she had what it took to become a nurse she didn't even feel she had what it took to fill out the application form so she had deep seated fears of failure that were making her  of procrastination is the one you need to guard against most strongly if you're procrastinating on something that you sense you may deep down inside feel you can do  someone talk to a friend talk to a counselor but try to find out are you for craft a navy because you don't want this thing or are you procrastinating because you're afraid of failure you know years ago i had a client got a lot of trouble with the i arrest patricia was a very honest business woman but for her whole first year of business she really hadn't kept good records in fact she had a shoe box that was full the problem was to have a relax we just relaxation exercises i asked her to visualize herself very strongly six months from when she would have all her records in order to completely organized where she could go through little recordkeeping device at the office supply that she could possibly award pretty colors and functional designs were the most important this was as much for inspiration as for the actual you to melody of the suggested that she borrowed books from the library of record t v and to schedule time with an account i ask her to spend at least five days just getting all these records together finally she was ready for the actual work that had to be done prior to her appointment with the camera then she was to buy a kitchen timer yes a kitchen timer and set it for fifteen minutes she was to work only until the buzzer went off once that buzzer went off no matter how much work she was getting done she was dystopic she could work as many of those little fifteen minutes a mess the issue as she wanted in in one day but she always had to stop when the