In brief
People procrastinate mainly because of poor planning, prioritising and organisation, and because they do not estimate how long tasks will take. Procrastinators take up tasks as they arrive without judging urgency, while organised people keep prioritised to-do lists and schedules and break work into manageable steps. Understanding these causes is the first step to stopping procrastination.
Last updated · Bodhih Insights team · reviewed by Siddharthan VGJ, Founder
- Lack of planning, prioritising and organisation: One of the causes for procrastination is that people are disorganized and do not give importance to tasks at hand. They take up tasks as and when they come in without realising the urgency and criticality of the task. Organized people manage their tasks much better because they will have things like prioritized to-do lists and schedules.
- Lack of task estimation and time management: Procrastinators do not calculate how long a task will take to complete and do not work back from the point to identify when they need to get started in order to avoid it being late whereas organized people are better placed to avoid procrastination because they know when a task will finish even under the most difficult circumstances and how to break the work down into manageable steps.
Quick answers
How can you stop procrastinating?
First understand why you procrastinate. Then plan and prioritise with a to-do list and schedule, estimate how long each task will take, work back from the deadline to decide when to start, and break the work into manageable steps so it does not run late.
