But this state should not be confused with being lazy because being lazy is simply not wanting to do anything or just wanting to relax. Procrastination is putting off something that needs to be done and a person may be very active and busy while deliberately delaying an important task. Take for example, you are busy playing and having fun with your friends, or maybe helping you mom or dad around the house, but you are not sitting down to learning the boring history lesson that the teacher is going to take the quiz from the next day. You are doing everything ‘but’ that which you should be doing.

As doing nothing gets you nothing, so procrastination is a totally unproductive state. And sooner or later you are going to find yourself in trouble for not having done something that you should have, or you might just feel guilty due to your failure to accomplish something, or not having done something a person dear to you was expecting you to do. Procrastination, if it becomes a chronic habit, is sure to lead to poor performance in almost everything, resulting in failure and hurt feelings.

People of all ages tend to procrastinate and they do it due to a lot of reasons. One of them is lack of confidence. Being unsure of one’s ability can make a person put off doing something, such as getting an assignment or presentation ready on time. If someone is weak in mathematics, he or she may delay sitting down to learn for an upcoming test. This lack of confidence can be accompanied with a fear of failure — failure of accomplishing a task successfully — leading to the person not trying to attempt it at all.

Or maybe it is the perfectionist attitude of a student that makes him not give in his assignment on time because he felt it required more research and a better presentation. If a task that is being delayed is considered as a boring and dull one, many people would rather take a nap than do it. Keeping your room, study table or cupboard clean is one task that most people find boring and so put it off until mom threatens with dire consequences. Even if you are making an attempt to do what you should be doing, you mind is wandering to other things — your books are lying right in front of you for the last one hour but you are happily daydreaming about your friend’s birthday party you attended the day before.

But more often than not, especially in younger people, it is the lack of priorities that makes them not realise when they should be doing what and the importance of doing something on time. Students may not realise what they should be doing first and can leave it too late, resulting in being unable to meet deadlines and expected results.

Once you realise that you are in the habit of procrastination, you have won half the battle as you now know that you are not doing something right and all that remains is to realise that you have the power to set things right.

Set your priorities

The first thing to do is to set your priorities. You can do it by mentally making a list of things that need to be done, or write it down on a piece of paper as seeing things in black and white always makes things clearer and easy to get back to in case you forget what you had planned.

Once you have done this, analysis what you need to do first. This can be a bit tricky for many of us as a lot of things may need to be done all at once, but we need to decide what is urgent and what is important. Take for example, you need to get a hair cut, start learning for the test coming up next week, arrange your CD collection, upload your latest photos on Facebook, polish your shoes for school and give the money for your sports uniform to your PT teacher. Out of all the list there are two things that are more important than other, learning for your test and handing the money for your sports day uniform to your teacher. If you don’t learn well you will get poor marks and if your don’t pay  you may not get it before the sports day when you are required to wear it.

It’s Saturday evening so what you can do is study for the test, as it is both important and urgent. Go for a hair cut on Sunday morning because that’s when you will have some free time that you will otherwise spend sleeping. While a haircut is not urgent and neither is it important, but it can be done with ease on the weekend rather than trying to take out time for it on busy week days. Arranging your CD collection or uploading your photos are things that you should do only when you have gotten over a task that is more important, such as leaning for your test. And you can do it before an important task such as paying for your sports uniform because you can only do it when you go to school! And yes, something as trivial as polishing your shoes comes before it because if you don’t do it on time, that is each night before school, you will either be wearing dirty shoes to school or forgoing your breakfast to do it early in the morning before the school van arrives.

So deciding on all that needs to be done is far easier than deciding what needs to be done first, but it’s still easy because you have now pointed out to yourself what you have to do.

Schedule

Make a schedule of what you have to do and stick to it. And if you write the schedule and put it up somewhere you can see it clearly, it will help in reminding you what you have to do when.

The right time

Choose a time to do something when you think you will be able to do it best. For instance, if you need to study you should select a time when you feel your mind will be fresh and you will learn quickly. You should not sit down to learn for your test soon after coming back from school just because it’s on top of your priority list but you are feeling tired and sleepy, it’s better to take a nap and get refreshed then get down to the business of learning otherwise you will simply be wasting your time and effort.

Break up

If you break large tasks into small manageable parts, the tasks will not seem very daunting and once a part gets completed, you will have a sense of accomplishment and it will give you a boost to start on the next part. Finish what your start

Doing a task mean completing it too, as leaving a task incomplete is like not having done it at all. And an incomplete work is one that most people don’t always come back to finish or do it when it is almost too late. So if you leave something halfway, it is very likely that you will get into your procrastination mode again and it will not get done.

Reward time

When you complete an important task, especially when you overcame your procrastination mode to do it, you can reward yourself in some way. It can be as simple as treating yourself to some ice-cream, watching a movie or a nice long chat with a friend or a game of cricket with your pals.

To achieve success and satisfaction, you need to stop procrastination get to you and lead you towards failure even when you could have accomplished every task that came your way. So get yourself together and beat procrastination now!