What is Your Procrastination Type?
Procrastination is so common, it happens to the best of us. The first step in overcoming it is to know how it shows up in your life and in your work. In working with Thought Leaders and Entrepreneurs, I’ve learned that there are 4 typical types of procrastination:
Avoiding. This is when you put off feeling an emotion such as anxiety, overwhelm, or failure. Maybe you put off reaching out to potential clients because you fear there could be rejection. It is important to note that you may not be aware that you feel this way. A lot of times the other things on your list get done first so it appears that the reason is simply a long “to-do” list. Digging deeper and noticing helps uncover patterns.
Optimism. You have unrealistic expectations of the time it will take so you overbook yourself. This is SO common in today’s world. We have mountains of tasks piling up and packed calendars (yes, even virtually during a pandemic). I see business owners put things like “update website” on their to-do list and yet they only have an hour to devote to it. This task might actually take several hours and a few iterations.
Pleasure seeking. You wait until you feel like doing something or want to do it. Perhaps you put off your workout because it doesn’t sound good today or you wait until you are “feeling it” to post on your Instagram Stories.
Perfectionism. If you can’t do it perfectly, it is not worth it, so you wait until you feel ready. You might have a complete online course recorded and ready to sell but you don’t promote it yet because it isn’t exactly the way you’d like it to be. Again, very common so the last thing you need to do is beat yourself up about it (the extra layer of guilt won’t help).
Awareness of your procrastination type is the first step in beating it! Once we see ourselves in these types and examples, we can begin to reverse engineer our solutions. You can start by downloading my Make it Happen Planner and create your action plan. I’ll be talking more about Overcoming Procrastination this month so DM me with your questions!
