Often, our procrastination triggers are emotional rather than rational, which makes it hard to analyse them in an objective way. Learning about the most common triggers can help in identifying and mitigating them. However, it is crucial to understand why we are struggling to do the work in the first place.
Why you procrastinate
Researchers have identified four different phases we need to go through in order to complete a task: inception, planning, action, and termination.
- Boring
- Sometimes, a task is not intellectually stimulating enough, and we feel boredom just at the thought of working on it
- Frustrating
- Perceived frustration can lead to higher task aversiveness
- Difficult
- Some tasks are intrinsically harder than others
- Stressful
- Stress disrupts goal achievement
- Ambiguous
- Vague instructions from a manager or lack of personal clarity may trigger your procrastination
- Unstructured
- Unrewarding
- We tend to avoid these tasks because we don’t feel like we will get anything in return for our work
- Meaningless
- There are ways to deal with these triggers
How to Manage Your Procrastination Triggers
Consider the source of your procrastination
- Only try to overcome your personal procrastinating with the ones that are urgent and important
- Adapt to your resistance levels
- Make the task itself more manageable by breaking it down into smaller chunks
- Reverse the triggers
- Spend a bit of time defining a specific goal and a detailed plan for ambiguous or unstructured tasks
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