Many people confuse procrastination and delayed-life syndrome. Let’s find out more about these concepts and find out how they differ.
Procrastination
Procrastination is primarily associated with internal discomfort from the impending completion of tasks. We may find it unpleasant to think that we need to “do the dishes” or “get ready for a meeting at work”. The reasons for this discomfort can range from a simple dislike of a certain action to a fear of encountering a result that we are not satisfied with. Therefore, during procrastination, we more often choose instant gratification to drown out this discomfort. For example, instead of a work task, to have more coffee with colleagues or to play on a Hellspin login website instead of starting to clean up.
Procrastination is also often confused with laziness. However, these concepts are not the same: when a person is lazy, he does nothing and doesn’t worry about it, which isn’t the case with procrastination. A distinctive feature of this condition isn’t only a sense of discomfort before the future task but also a sense of guilt that this task won’t be done. A person is aware of the importance and urgency of the task, but doesn’t perform it, finding various reasons and excuses.
Deferred Life Syndrome
With deferred-life syndrome, the situation is somewhat different: in this condition, we remain absolutely calm. Everything seems to go according to plan. You go to the intended goal, postponing momentary desires for the benefit of your future:
- When I save money, then we’ll live.
- First I’ll lose weight, then I’ll buy myself beautiful things.
- Now it isn’t the time for vacation – I will always have time to rest.
All of these theses are not perceived critically and don’t cause any discomfort, on the contrary, it seems that everything is logical and all of these tasks really take time.
It turns out that the deferred life syndrome and procrastination are two different states. The main difference between them is that procrastination involves putting things off in favor of short-term pleasure to avoid encountering tension and discomfort, while deferred-life syndrome is about putting off momentary pleasure in favor of long-term plans.
Neither of these states, however, helps us achieve our desired goals. To start working on your attitudes, try the following steps:
- Acknowledge the problem. This is a necessary step on the way to getting rid of it. Acknowledgment can help formulate the reasons that make you want to put things off, and thus further work through them.
- Formulate goals. Try to write short and specific, arrange the goals in order of their achievability: from the more realistic to the most ambitious.
- Make a plan for accomplishing the goals. Write a list of consecutive specific actions to achieve the goals, set clear deadlines. If you don’t make it in time, that’s okay; the main thing here is to get started.
If you cannot deal with this issue alone, ask your friends or relatives to help you. It’s much easier to switch to a better life together.