The habit of procrastination can affect all spheres of life, which leads us to avoid taking concrete actions to improve our reality. Here are some aspects that procrastination affects:
- Dealing with financial issues directly and frankly.
- Following healthy habits such as exercise, a healthy diet, and regular check-ups.
- Maintaining healthy relationships.
- Establishing meaningful work.
- Organizing our affairs and simplifying unresolved issues.
- Arriving at appointments on time.
- Learning new things.
These are some of the aspects that procrastination affects, and there are many other aspects. We procrastinate through habits that might seem simple, such as repeatedly checking our phones, checking email, browsing our favorite websites, watching news and TV shows, or playing games.
In other words, we procrastinate through countless distractions. The goal of practicing these habits is to avoid doing the tasks that we find difficult. However, the change begins when you decide that you no longer want to allow these habits to harm you.
So what we need to think about is how to stop following these bad behavioral patterns and create useful ones instead. To do so, you must consider these established behavioral patterns as practices that have been transformed by repetition into fixed habits.
How Do Practices Turn into Fixed Habits?
You had not yet established a pattern of procrastination when you first started doing it. You had the option of doing your homework right away or delaying it and doing something fun instead, but you were reluctant or afraid to take on the task at hand, making the alternatives more appealing.
In other words, you took the simple route, which made you feel comfortable temporarily. However, despite how much you put off doing the work, it must be done eventually, so this immediate comfort will be followed by difficulty.
Easy choices usually create temporary gratification, but by making these choices over and over again, they turn into habits and familiar behavioral patterns. Later, your thinking will develop along these lines, and you won't require the reward that these decisions provide you.
These habits become so ingrained to the point that you choose them automatically, and breaking the behavioral pattern becomes challenging.
You must be motivated to change and exert conscious effort in order to break these patterns.
How to Change Your Behavioral Pattern?
There are simple steps to get rid of a behavioral pattern, but they require taking action:
1. Decide that you no longer want the previous pattern
The first step is to realize that the previous behavioral pattern no longer serves you; rather, it harms your interests. When you decide that you are tired of the harm it has caused you, you will be ready to change.
2. Commit to conscious change
Once you've decided that the previous pattern is harmful to your interests and that you no longer want it, you can move to the next step, which is committing to new habits that replace old ones while maintaining a high level of awareness as you make the change. One effective way to keep your commitment is to commit to other people, such as your family and friends.
3. Make time for mindful training
Patterns will not change randomly, as you must keep practicing the actions that lead to change while possessing the awareness and intention to make it happen. Allocate a short period of time each day to training, starting with five minutes a day.
It is recommended that you make this training the first thing you do in the morning before checking your email or starting work. Set a reminder to maintain daily training.
4. Be determined to practice training
Before you start, consider the factors that motivated you to do this training as well as the harm that procrastination did to your career, health, happiness, relationships, and finances. After you remember these things, resolve to improve these aspects of your life.
5. Do a task you've been putting off
Pick something you've been putting off doing, even if it's not too difficult or annoying and start doing it. Commit to doing that task for just five minutes.
6. Avoid practices that consolidate the habit of procrastination
Commit only to doing the things and tasks that consolidate your new pattern, and do nothing else. Be aware of your desires to do something else or quit that task, because noticing and assimilating your old patterns is of great value.
Pay attention to your motives, but do not act on them or judge yourself for them, as they are mere feelings that should not worry you. Remain calm and confront these motives, then return to the task over and over again until this habit becomes a new behavioral pattern.
In Conclusion
These tips will help you establish new behavioral patterns and habits that serve you whenever you feel the need to do so. Many people have done that, and you can certainly do that too.
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