Procrastination
Procrastination is the enemy of anyone who is on the road to personal development and quietly affects all.
Procrastination is doing things which are not moving you in the direction of your personal development goals.
Procrastination is another way of saying, “wasting time”. The dictionary definition lists Procrastination as the following:
1.to defer action; delay:
to procrastinate until an opportunity is lost.
2.to put off till another day or
time; defer; delay.
To procrastinate is to delay and defer. By wasting time you are putting off until tomorrow or another day what you should be doing today. This is one of the biggest barriers to achieving your goals. Everyone procrastinates but the high achievers know when they are wasting time, and make sure they stop and get back to focusing on the important task in front of them, and that important task is working towards their goals.
One
of the biggest time wasters of the last 30 years or more is watching TV,
which is quickly being taken over by surfing the internet, which is just
what you are doing now. We spend hours watching TV, which includes soap
operas and sport, and gain nothing from it except some instant pleasure.
This is part of the problem; “pleasure is easy come and easy go”,
whereas enjoyment of something is worked at and lasts much longer.
To get the most out of something and attain your goals you must put the effort in and not waste time.
Why do we waste time? This is a simple to answer question. We waste time because it is easy to. We don’t always focus on our goals because they are sometimes hard and take a lot of work. We tend to focus on the easy option, which is why we spend hours watching TV and sport.
We
are also afraid. We are scared to start something because we know it
will be difficult, we know that it will be a hard slog and we are too
afraid of the hard work. We also may have fear because the task is
something new to us and we don’t know what to expect, we wonder how will
it turn out? Fear also plays a big part if we have to do something we
worry will be uncomfortable, perhaps we have to confront someone, which
will put us in a difficult position.
One thing is for certain if you put off until tomorrow what you could and should do today you will not succeed with completing your goals.
If you don’t hit your target you can look back and pinpoint where and when you wasted the time. By putting things off you inevitably increase your stress levels which in turn affect everything you do. Doing what is right to complete your goals, when you have defined them to be done, puts you on the road to success and achievement.