Like the proverbial ostrich with his neck in the sand, we have at times put off looking at situations that needed some attention. In order to uproot this habit, I feel that we need to take a closer look at its cause.
Procrastination is only a symptom or manifestation of something else.
The most common occurrence for me is when I have tried to avoid situations I didn't know how to handle. In instances when I had to tell someone an unpleasant 'something,' I would avoid doing it until the last minute. In other cases where the task at hand seemed boring or unpleasant, I delayed taking action and let it accumulate, i.e., filing, dishes, cleaning up, etc. When we delay dealing with something, whether it is something as material as washing the dishes or something as intangible as 'unresolved situations' between people, time only serves to compound the error. Our way of dealing with reality, or in some cases avoiding dealing with reality, comes back to haunt us.