Procrastination: Stop and Take the Time to Smell the Roses

Posted under Procrastination on Wednesday 24 September 2008 at 8:11 am

In my previous articles I was mentioning motivation as the main moving force for personal development and success. It is quite obvious that if a person is not enough motivated and challenged to do something, he or she will not struggle to succeed, as well as never feel sad for lost opportunities. Now, we are about to learn the second not less important factor which frequently causes our absolute indifference and poor self-discipline. This factor is lack of clarity: a lack of clear and specific goals, and lack of understanding what we want to achieve, when and in what way.

It is reported that only 3-5% of people have clear realistic written goals and objectives for their life. Such people are supposed to be more confident and more determined on their way to achieving those goals. They are also considered to be more reliable, more pragmatic and precise, and they usually have fewer problems with estimating the time for accomplishing their tasks. Finally, they are supposed to be more successful.

That is why time management specialists recommend to write down your specific long-term goals on a piece of paper, then write down your short-term goals, and then do all that “scheduling” thing, specify the deadlines for every step, etc. They say that this will be your roadmap to success. Well, this idea can sound useless and quite senseless to many people, especially to those who have some unclear and “standard” goals in their mind, like “I will buy a better car when I get paid for this project” or “I will start a diet and lose 10 pounds till the end of this year”. I understand those people, and I admit that they can live their life happily without any planning and scheduling on paper.

All I want to ask you now is just giving a clear answer to yourself: do you have some certain ambitions or aspirations in your life? What are you trying to achieve in this life? What is you life? Is it like going with the flow and sitting on fence, or like looking for something special and helping other people to feel comfortable in this world? Where do you want to be in 10 or 20 years? What do you need to do for that? It is not for scheduling or planning something, it is for yourself. Take a break from your daily routine for a minute, sit down and think about your future, your goals and reasons you live this life for. Also, try to understand that the clearer your goals are, the easier it will be for you to overcome your procrastination and laziness, learn being successful and find your place among the most productive people of your generation.