Once you have acknowledged that your procrastination is caused by an emotional block (guilt, anxiety, feelings of inadequacy, etc.), and you have analyzed the underlying causes, you need to clearly specify how you procrastinate. Let's look at some examples of the questions you need to ask yourself to determine this.
- Do you think a task will go away if you ignore it? The only thing that will go away is your paycheck when you never get the job done.
- Do you underestimate the work involved to finish the task? Or do overestimate your abilities and resources to do the task? Do you believe that you grasp concepts so well that you need to only spend one hour on a problem that normally takes six hours?
- Do you deceive yourself into believing that a mediocre performance or lesser standards are acceptable? The only thing this gets you is a mediocre career and will prevent you from consciously making the proper choices about important goals in your life.
- Do you find yourself substituting one worthy activity for another? It may also be important to clean your house, wash the laundry, or mow the lawn - but if you do that instead of working on your goals, you are procrastinating.
- Do you really believe that 'minor' delays are harmless? Have you ever taken a five minute break to run in the kitchen and get a snack; only to find you get involved in baking a cake and an hour has passed before you remember you're got work to do? Well, maybe not, but you get the point.
- Do you make it look like you have a commitment to a task rather than actually doing it? For instance, you take a book on vacation, but never open it. Maybe you decline a social invitation, stating that you have work to do, but never getting around to doing any work. This just causes you to stay in a constant state of unproductive readiness to work, but never getting any work done.
- Do you get stuck on only one part of the task? An example would be if I kept getting hung up on writing the introduction to this course - writing and rewriting it, but never dealing with the body and conclusion. The course would never get written and project would fall apart.
- Do you become paralyzed trying to decide between alternative choices? Some people spend so much time trying to decide what to do, that they never leave themselves time to do the task when they finally get to it.