Several Ways to Heal from Procrastination

Written by Fatwa Hapsari Alwihani

Have you ever felt so tired in a day? After you checked you found yourself doing nothing but scrolling your smartphone or playing an online game on your personal computer. For me it was another level of pathetic ☹.

It is different when you are sad because of the technical failure, at least you have tried to accomplish it. When you do not finish your work because of laziness, it means that you have not tried to start it. You might think that there will always tomorrow. But what if tomorrow brings you another thing to do?

The act of postponing something is called Procrastination. Some of us probably have experienced it many times especially when there were a bunch of tasks in a week and we have to submit it in another week. We either disorganized where to start or waited the mood to do it. As the time passed by, we still do not find any motivation and the due date comes. All you have is a panic attack, being rushed on doing the task, getting nervous every second, and having less satisfying results. Of course, we do regret it yet repeat it again and again since we think “I am the last-minute kind of person who gets the idea in particular time”. At that moment we do not realize that actually when we start doing that task, we do not have a clear idea. It is because we are demanded by time and we do not want to miss the submission date. What I am trying to say is there is no mood or idea until you give a shot.

Since procrastination is one of our problems. Let me share some ways of healing from that habit based on my experience and articles that I have read.

1. Temptation bundling

Temptation bundling is the act of mixing between what we like and what we have to do. For example, you are about to take the TOEFL/IELTS test but you think that your listening skill is far from good. In addition, you are addicted to watching movies or series on Netflix. Thus, the thing you can do is watch the movie/series with English subtitles regularly.

2. Make the Consequences

Making consequences do not mean you are being so hard on yourself. It means that you are practicing self-discipline. Set your daily goals, put your priority on the first list, concentrate your mind, and do not forget to write possibilities that might happen if you skip it. When you find difficulties in being disciplined, you can involve somebody else who has the same goal. Ask them to do assignments together, make appointments with them.

3. Take a rest from your gadget

Nowadays gadgets are becoming our part of daily life. It seems more impossible to separate people from gadgets since we are now in a pandemic era. Every aspect of people’s lives depends on gadgets and internet existence. Gadgets can bring us both positive and negative impacts on our life. It makes everything easier; we can get in touch and we can also see more updates of others’ lives.  However, they pull us into an addiction. The more we follow their daily activity, the more curious we get. Curiosity brings us unproductivity. We are willing to spend hours in a day staring at gadgets to scroll some social media platforms such as Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and many more.

In my case, sometimes I ignored my task to do on that day and I assumed that I still had enough time to finish it. In fact, I postponed all assignments until the due date. Turns out I realize that I cannot let that habit stay longer in my life. I try to cut them one by one through deactivating some social media accounts; I decided to choose Instagram first since it was the most addictive account that I have. I can be impulsively open Instagram while I am doing something important. It helps me. I can be more focused on what I do. It might be different in others’ case; they could be addicted to online games, video bloggers, dancing video challenges, and so on. Hence, escaping or resting from gadgets is something we need to consider when we are stuck in a procrastination habit.

4. Make a task more achievable

As I mentioned before, we need to set our daily goals. It means we should have at least a goal each day. The goal does not have a complex goal. We can start it by making a simple goal that possibly could be accomplished on that day. The keys are consistency and commitment to do it sustain.

Last year, when I was doing my thesis, I found myself being demotivated and delayed to start every chapter on it. Until my friend came to me and told me that I do not have to write all chapters at once; she said at least one day I write one or two paragraphs. I followed her advice and unpredictably I started to write and revised my thesis with wholeheartedly lighter than before. Since then, I believe that we should make daily goals more achievable.

Those tips above worked on me. We know procrastination leads us into nothing but regret. Nevertheless, leaving procrastination is not such an easy thing to do. Before we choose which one of those tips is suitable for us, we should have strong determination to get rid of the habit from our life. Thus, whenever we start being unguarded, we will remember that determination. Good luck buddies! Never quit! All of us are healing.