Nice blog Anna, especially liked the embedded video!! I was planning on blogging on a similar topic myself but funnily enough I didn't get round to it =)

Hi Owen

Thanks for your comment. Yeah… video is great! I was planning this entry for a long time now… just did not know how to start, but there is no such a thing like "good way" for starting… Starting itself is good enough and have it done is even better ;)))

Anna

Hi Mr.Ahmad,

Thank you for your interest.

I wouldn’t go so far to name procrastination psychological disorder. It is a matter of interpretation of definitions but according to Wikipedia “the genetics of mental illness (or else psychological disorder) may really be the genetics of brain development, with different outcomes possible, depending on the biological and environmental context”. Certainly, procrastination is a disorder but rather behavioral then mental.  It is a habit of distract ourselves from feeling fear and other overwhelming   emotions we want to escape from. Nevertheless, the persistent procrastination maybe a symptom of an underlying psychological disorder. I need to say here that I am not a professional psychologist and all I am writing is taken from my own and my friends’ experience. I am very interested in all aspects of human mind so I am taking extra time to analyze and make some conclusions but these are the ones of the amateur.

As to your question” how to overcome it to make our lives better?” there is no one simple answer. First step is to realize that we actually have this problem, as you already pointed it out. Very often our procrastination is related to stress relief and as such we are seeing that we “deserve” another break in order to become more relax and be able to act better afterwards. As such it is very hard to be detected as a problem. Once we understand that nature of our delaying is more than simple unwind only and that we are into the pattern of constant delays which are interfering with our plans, than we can start to think why. This would be the next step: to analyze what we are trying to avoid by delaying. Most common reason would be a devastating fear of failure, but there are many others which are more or less associated like our low self esteem, unbalance of work and play time, perfectionism, fear of responsibilities. After we will need to concentrate to follow the pattern of “the wrong” habits and try to brake it by facing our fears and imperfections. Important would be to realize that these are creations of our own mind and that problems which we are standing in front of are mostly not as big as we tend to see them or do not exist at all.

Often we might be back into the old ways during this “curing” process without even knowing. But we should to remember to be good for ourselves. It is very interesting that as we advising our friends we are trying to stay positive saying: “Don’t worry! That is O.K. Just do not stop trying. Next time it will do much better!” But when it comes to our own person we often repainting “You failed again! Why can’t be any better?!?”  We should to be our own friends not critiques!

As to the books about this subject I would recommend “The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play” by Neil Fiore. It is very good and well written position on this subject.

All the best!
Anna

As for my own experience with procrastination, I can say that it is a real destroying thing.It holds you up and after you realise that you had wasted your precious minutes, hours just thinking what to do and not executing plans.The remedy lies in taking small steps each moment and the best fix is not stopping.Once you get exhausted you realise that you have utilised the day and thus practising this day in and day out would cure of this time sucking parasite.