Time Management - Marc Mancini

Procrastination: The Thief of Time 45
tasks—and unclear goals or task flow—are enough to make
anyone want to postpone the inevitable.
Fighting the Forces
Internal causes for procrastination are more difficult to attack
than external ones, but once psychological obstacles are conquered,
they’re conquered for all tasks. If you procrastinate
because of a fear of change, that fear will color many different
kinds of tasks. Once you conquer this fear, you’ll be able to
approach most tasks with renewed energy.
While a single internal cause can make you procrastinate on
many tasks, external causes for procrastination tend to be taskspecific.
So, if you’re putting off doing something for an external
cause, you can cope with that cause and stop procrastinating—
but that victory probably won’t help you with other external
causes that are making you procrastinate on other tasks.
Why Do You Procrastinate?
Examine Figure 4-1 carefully. Is it easy for you to identify the
category that is least relevant to your own procrastination tendencies?
Can you easily identify the one that you feel is the
principal cause of your own delaying tactics?
If it’s easy to discern which typical causes of procrastination
are the most and least relevant to your behavior, then you’re
probably well clear of a procrastination rut—or, if you are in a
rut, the challenge of getting out may be relatively simple for
you. If, however, you found it somewhat difficult to identify the
least and most relevant causes, your procrastination may be
caused by a complex web of interdependent factors. You face
an uphill battle. You’ll have to be tenacious. But you can win.
If you identified the factor most relevant to your procrastination
as internal (psychological) and the factor least relevant as
external, then you’ll need to look deeply into yourself for the
answers. On the other hand, if the factors most influencing your
procrastination are external, you’ll have to do all you can to
reshape the environment you work and live in.