The Damage of Procrastination

The damage that procrastination can cause is vast and can affect your health and happiness. No one wants to be someone who struggles with procrastination but many feel out of control to help it. Although procrastination is often thought of to be work or school-related its can also apply to decision-making. Procrastinator’s decision-making can be particularly detrimental when you’re high-up at a company or the founder of your own business. This blog will cover the negative affect that procrastination can have, how you can figure out if you struggle with decision-making procrastination and if you do how you can overcome it.

The Negative Effect of Procrastination

Along with poor performance, and negative affect on professional work and schoolwork, procrastination has been tied to poor health. Psychology Today conducted a study on students who self-identify as procrastinators, and it found that they were more likely to catch colds and the flu than their counterparts. The study also found that those who struggle in this way are more likely to have gastrointestinal problems, as those are often linked to ongoing stress.

Those who struggle with procrastination and decision-making procrastination tend to feel higher levels of stress, anxiety, frustration, and guilt and lower levels of happiness. This leads to more serious mental health issues like poor self-worth and low self-esteem and in some cases depression. It makes sense that people feel out of control and like something is wrong with them when they know they have unfinished tasks but cannot seem to simply finish them. In the next section, we’ll go over what you can do to overcome procrastination.

How To Know If You’re a Decision-Making Proscratinator

Everyone struggles to finish tasks occasionally and it is almost impossible to be 100% productive all the time. But being a decision-making procrastinator is slightly different. The way you can diagnose yourself as such is by noticing how often you are plagued with panic about making the right choice in any given decision. Are you regularly and consistently stumped as to what choice to make? Do you feel anxious when you consider either outcome or alternative? Do you not want to be held accountable for making the wrong choice? If you feel these things consistently when faced with a decision, you might be a decision-making procrastinator.

How To Overcome Decision-Making Procrastination

Mindful motivation helps us overcome procrastination, both generally and when making decisions. It’s completely normal to feel stressed when you’re busy but what’s not helpful is pretending that the decision or work disappears simply because you don’t complete it. Below are some steps you can take to help yourself overcome decision-making procrastination.

Collect all information about the decision, and break it down into parts.

First, gather all necessary information related to the decision. A mental model can be a good guide if you need help figuring out what information you need, especially if it’s outside of your comfort zone. Then break down the decision into micro-decisions, starting small allows you to assess the smaller components and should put you more at ease.

Ask Yourself: What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

Allowing your mind to take you to the worst-case scenario may be scary but it will shirt you out of inaction, which is where procrastinator’s decision-making lives. Lean into to how bad things could be on either side. Sometimes what you think will be so outrageous you’ll realize you were making a mountain out of a molehill, and sometimes there’s valuable information to be gained.

Take Yourself Out of The Equation

When faced with a difficult decision that you don’t want to make, take yourself out of it. Pretend that it was a coworker or friend who needs advice, what would you say to them about each alternative? What’s more, what would you say to them if they said they didn’t want to make any decision at all? This should shift you out of decision-making procrastination and into a plan of action.

When All Else Fails, Simply Decide

This may seem impossible, but getting in touch with your first instinct can be a helpful tool in making an important decision. Once you’ve done your research and imagined each outcome, what does your gut tell you to do? Malcolm Gladwell and others like him believe that theirs an immense amount of knowledge to be gain from going with our first thought, as he writes about in his book Blink. Your adaptive unconscious may have already decided but your emotions and anxiety are getting in the way.