Do you ever plan to start doing something that you have always set a goal to achieve but you keep on postponing it to a later date. You wonder what is going on or rather what could be the problem with you? Family and friends keep on complaining about this habit but it never bothers you.

More often than not, this tendency of buying time, unreadiness to act is justified and rationalise with lame excuses, denial and sheer helplessness about this undesired behaviour as a normal way of life.

Sometimes,you find yourself saying that you need to do something about it, for instance, get help but the enemy grips in again and say to you that’s it is not the right time.

Think of a time you were about to hack something in your life, then unexpected happened again.What made you not to achieve, actualise it? Was it as a result of bad luck, needed more time, wasn’t prepared, lack of motivation, having busy schedules or all sorts of lame excuses.

No! let’s face it. Your enemy here is at play. Procrastination! I guess you know, the trouble and how it feels being in this state of postponing and pushing things past their deadline.

What exactly is Procrastination?

Procrastination is a debilitating maladaptive behavior that can negatively impact your mental health  your sense of resilience and overall confidence of handling issues in life.

May be, you have already tried a number of quick fix solutions but all are  in vain. That’s frustrating right? Even now as you read this article a thought could be telling you to read it later. You could be wondering how you can overcome this behaviour that  gets into your way productivity?

In simple words, procastination can be defined as an act of postponing things, planned action and activity to later date which you may never get to do or rather get done.The behaviour is preoccupied with constant postponing task , to do list and task/ work. That’s the immense  power of procastination.

What you need to know is that the emotional distress and automatic thoughts and beliefs  keeps  you trap into this vicious cycle of safety behaviours. I will do it later.It can be overwhelming dealing with this never ending patterns of feeling traps, especially when it come to meeting  the deadline.

You may find yourself having pile up of work which put pressure on you to a point of looking for a way out/ unhealthy coping mechanism. Relapsing to this behaviour can be mind boggling, in that sometimes you want to stop postponing things to a later day.

The” ambivalence” having two conflicting ideas keeps you stuck, where it becomes obvious that something no where gets into your way of staying  motivated  and desired to act immediately  goes away. You end up finding yourself in habitual problem again again and again and so you wonder what could be the problem and how to fix it.

If you are struggling with procastination, we acknowledge the challenge is real and you’re not alone. I can only imagine how it keeps on crippling back. PSS, all is not lost there’s hope .

CBT is  a form of therapy / treatment coupled with self awareness and behaviour activation is one  the skills or rather   you can use to overcome the maladaptive behaviour.

The good news is that you can beat procrastination without hesitation and change your life.

• Stop Castrophizing.

This is a tendency of blowing things out of proportion that keeps enabling the maladaptive behaviour .I.e its overwhelming, there’s so much in my plate

• Give It a Shot

• Believe You Can Do It

Self-talk (what you say to yourself when you are alone) has a lot of impact on beating procrastination. Adopting new enhancing belief system can go along in behaviour change.

• Think and ACT Differently
• Adopt Here and Now Mentality
• Set Reminders
• Behaviour Activation.
• D.I.Y
• Get a Patbio Buddy to keep you toes.
• Create A To Do List
• Recognise Progress however Little
• See the End at the Beginning
• Remember it is a Process.
• Stop Being Hard on Yourself.
• Its a new Beginning.
• Easy Does It
• Get Rid of Perfectionism Trap                                                                                                                        

Well, its not easy dealing with it. As a matter of fact, you may require professional help to understand your triggers and be equipped with  useful skills of handling it in a health way .If you/ know someone who is need of professional help to break free from  procastination consider reaching for  professional help.

Please  do not hesitate or shy away, form reaching out for support, we are here to help. You can overcome the odds, professional help is on the way.