Often, procrastination and laziness seem to get mixed up when in reality they’re two completely different things. Laziness is apathy towards the work you are supposed to be doing whereas when you procrastinate you know and want to get things done however just being unable to do so.

There are 2 main types of procrastination: Acute Procrastination and Chronic Procrastination.

Acute procrastination is the simpler one. It can be triggered by mood swings or just day to day occurrences such as a bad day, feeling fatigued or just general unwillingness to complete your work.

Chronic procrastination on the other hand is more complicated and is usually linked to various different types of psychological conditions that affect you and your productivity long term. This is usually more difficult to deal with and required a lot of hard work, resilience and patience. Typically lifestyle changes are also involved – however, luckily if you put in the work, the changes can be permanent.

So why exactly do YOU Procrastinate?

So why do people procrastinate? Procrastination isn’t as simple or black and white as it is often seen to be in our societies today and usually the causes for procrastination come from some underlying psychological issue. There are different reasons as to why someone might struggle with procrastination but the key is to ask yourself: What am I worried about when it comes to completing my work?

Here are some of the possible reasons you might be procrastinating without even knowing!

• You are scared of failure and therefore procrastinate the things you are supposed to do because you fear a negative outcome and all your hard work going to waste – you can’t fail at something if you don’t try.

• You are a perfectionist and therefore you are scared of making a mistake or have your work be flawed therefore you put doing it off for extended periods of time.

• You fear negative feedback or rejection from people who will be exposed to your work, whether it is teachers, bosses, coworkers, a large audience, the general public and struggle with the idea of disappointing them.

• You have abstract and vague goals which make it hard for you to concentrate and focus on the details of a task which make them more difficult to try and achieve.

• You cannot see an immediate reward for the work you are doing as it is in the far future and therefore can end up struggling with patience and consistency in the long run.

• You don’t feel connected to your future self therefore, things you are supposed to complete in the present that will benefit you in the future become daunting and difficult to do as you can’t see yourself in the future, reaping the consequences of your present.

• You are indecisive, especially when it comes to the priority of your tasks and all the different ways that you can face whatever task you are procrastinating in.

• You feel overwhelmed. This can occur for many reasons – maybe you have one giant colossal task and you have no idea where to even start or you have many little tasks that have piled up into one huge daunting headache.

• You feel anxiety related to the task at hand and put off completing it to avoid negative feelings of anxiety and stress.

• You don’t feel like you are in control of yourself or even the work you have to do and you feel like too much of your life is at the hands of external factors.

There are some of the most common reasons for procrastination and to help solve any problem you need to get to its cause. So it is important to sit down with yourself and have an honest think about why is it that you procrastinate? Are you worried about something happening after the task is done? Or is it rather something that could happen while you’re doing the task?

This is especially important to do because if you are going to reshape yourself to cut down on procrastination it is vital to know why it came about in the first place.

So now that you’ve got your reason for procrastinating figured out, find out how to quit procrastinating by reading our article on 17 foolproof ways to stop procrastinating once and for all!