(originally published on my old blog Sept 2017)
Procrastination is a process of delaying and avoiding the completion of tasks in favour of more pleasurable pursuits. The result is that less urgent tasks are prioritised and more urgent tasks are left unattended.
Here is a recent article on procrastination research:
The short of it is that we procrastinate what we don’t value enough. So the key to not procrastinating important projects is to value them more. Just because a project is urgent or important does not mean that we necessarily value it. At a deeper level the reasons why we don’t value these lesser valued projects may be connected to other values that interfere with the valuing process. I know from my own experience that working on values can be powerful for dealing with procrastination – or for clearing the deck of projects, tasks that are not that important and not valued a great deal. Once you understand the dynamics of your own value system and how it creates its own inner conflicts you can find ways of working ‘with’ rather than ‘against’ your own values.
I have developed an approach for working with values in procrastination that is based on scientific ideas about procrastination and once applied can lead to positive results in a short time. If you are interested contact me via the appointments page.