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Identifying and avoiding the causes of
procrastination
On the back of the jacket of
Jack Canfield’s book, The Success Principles, this
quotation caught our attention: “The principles always work if
you work the principles”.
Perhaps this is too simplistic
a statement or merely echoes another familiar marketing
“come-on”, but it does translate into a variation of the work
ethic. To us, this means doing instead of just thinking.
And doing is synonymous to
action, execution, implementation, carrying out – all these
convey the active mode as opposed to the passive
mode of just thinking.
The human brain knows no
limits when it comes to thinking out ways and strategies in
dealing with all kinds of problems, but if these strategies and
plans are NOT acted upon, they really hold no meaning – they’re
like empty blueprints camouflaged in sparkling rhetoric. And
rhetoric comes cheap these days.
We’ve made up our minds to be
less ambitious about this work, and called the 101
recommendations and suggestions contained in this book as simply
TIPS. Tips on how NOT to procrastinate.
Procrastination pervades every
aspect of our lives. And we’ve mastered it to perfection having
learned a subtle form of it when we were babies.
We delayed falling
asleep because our mothers wouldn’t cradle us in her arms.
We’ve procrastinated in performing our duties at home, in
school, in the work place, and in our most fragile human
relationships. We shudder to think what the final tally of lost
hours will be because we procrastinated habitually.
Some of the tips we share here
may be useful and some may be irrelevant. Others will come in
handy not necessarily today, but at a later stage of our lives.
Procrastination is an expensive
habit. We discovered that one of the ways that will not make us
procrastinate is to figure out the dollar amount of something
that was not done because of procrastination.
It all points to the generally
accepted idea that time is money. This alone can serve as a
strong motivator not to procrastinate again. Or at least to try
not procrastinate!
Jack Canfield quoted Brian
Tracy to drive home the message: “Life is like a combination
lock; your job is to find the right numbers, in the right order,
so you can have anything you want”.
We’d be lying if we told you
that if you followed our 101 tips on how not to procrastinate,
you can have anything you want. It doesn’t work that way.
These tips are ideas that have
come from our heads and from other people’s heads. And it’s up
to you to apply them in every segment of your daily routine.
Avoiding procrastination is more effective when we start with
little steps. It does not mean having to change our lives
drastically.
But as one writer said, not
procrastinating will make us appreciate the life we have now.
And as we build on the small steps, we’d be amazed at how much
we can accomplish over the years.
In deciding not to
procrastinate, you may want to accompany this determination with
clear cut and well defined goals.
In other words, have a goal
that is quantified, and not just qualified.
For example, saying “I will
lose weight” is NOT as powerful as “I will lose 35 pounds in
1-1/2 years.” These are concrete data you can work with. “I
will lose weight” sounds noble enough, but let’s count the ways,
shall we?
Table of
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