"I was going to tackle my procrastination problem last weekend,
but I never got around to it."
(David Cain. Πηγή: thoughtcatalog.com)
Πόσο πιο αντιπροσωπευτική μπορεί να είναι η παραπάνω φράση για την αναβλητικότητα;!
Είναι φυσιολογικό όταν κάτι σου προκαλεί στρες να θέλεις να το αποφύγεις. Όμως μέχρι ποιο σημείο είναι αυτό εντός λογικών πλαισίων συνύπαρξης με τους συνεργάτες/φίλους/οικογένεια; Αν αυτή η συνεχής αναβολή υποχρεώσεων δημιουργεί καθυστερήσεις στην επαγγελματική εξέλιξή σου, υπάρχει κάποιο επιτρεπτό όριο πέραν του οποίου θα χαρακτηριστείς με τη βούλα «αναβλητικός άνθρωπος»;
Δεν παίζει ρόλο το πόσες δεξιότητες μπορεί να διαθέτεις ή το πόσο ευγενικός ή κοινωνικός είσαι. Αντιθέτως, μπορεί να είσαι ένα ικανότατο και δημιουργικό άτομο. Οφείλεις να διεκπεραιώσεις εργασίες στο σπίτι ή στη δουλειά (ή ακόμα και να ανανεώνεις το blog σου!) αλλά συνεχίζεις να χρονοτριβείς και να ματαιώνεις τις διαδικασίες οι οποίες όχι απλώς δε σου είναι ευχάριστες, σε αγχώνουν σε σημείο ψυχοσωματικής καταπόνησης. Με αποτέλεσμα να συσσωρεύονται οι ανειλημμένες υποχρεώσεις και να δημιουργούν γκρίζες ζώνες στην καθημερινότητά σου: δεν τις αγγίζεις, δεν μιλάς γι'αυτές. Και προφανώς όλο αυτό με τη σειρά του σε βάζει σε έναν φαύλο κύκλο πρόκλησης άγχους, στον οποίο και εγκλωβίζεσαι όλο και περισσότερο.
Είναι αληθές ότι η αναβλητικότητα μοιάζει με τεμπελιά και πολλές φορές οι δύο έννοιες συγχέονται μεταξύ τους λόγω άγνοιας, μα δυστυχώς δεν πρόκειται για το ίδιο πράγμα.
Το να διαλύεις βουλήν επ' αόριστο συνδέεται με καταστάσεις συναισθηματικής πίεσης που υφίστανται άτομα κάθε άλλο παρά ανεύθυνα και οκνηρά.
Στη συνέχεια παρατίθενται ορισμένα αυτούσια αποσπάσματα διαδικτυακών πηγών σχετικά με την αναβλητικότητα (procrastination).
"Procrastination (from latin's "procrastinare", that translates in
to: the prefix pro-, 'forward', and suffix -crastinus, 'till next day'
from cras, 'tomorrow') is the avoidance of doing a task that needs to
be accomplished. Sometimes, procrastination takes place until the "last
minute" before a deadline.
Procrastination can take hold on any aspect of life —putting off
cleaning the stove, repairing a leaky roof, seeing a doctor or dentist,
submitting a job report or academic assignment or broaching a stressful
issue with a partner.
Procrastination can lead to feelings of guilt,
inadequacy, depression and self-doubt.
The pleasure principle
may be responsible for procrastination; one may prefer to avoid
negative emotions, and to delay stressful tasks. The belief that one
works best under pressure provides an additional incentive to the
postponement of tasks. Some psychologists cite such behavior as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision. Piers Steel indicated in 2010 that anxiety is just as likely to get
people to start working early as late, and that the focus of studies on
procrastination should be impulsiveness. That is:
Anxiety will cause people to delay
only if they are impulsive.
For some people, procrastination can be persistent and tremendously
disruptive to everyday life. For these individuals, procrastination may
be symptomatic of a psychological disorder. Procrastination has been
linked to a number of negative associations, such as depression, irrational behaviour, low self-esteem, anxiety and neurological disorders such as ADHD. Others have found relationships with guilt and stress. Therefore, it is important for people whose procrastination has become
chronic and is perceived to be debilitating to seek out a trained therapist or psychiatrist to see if an underlying mental health issue may be present.
With a distant deadline, procrastinators report significantly less
stress and physical illness than do non-procrastinators. However, as the
deadline approaches, this relationship is reversed. Procrastinators
report more stress, more symptoms of physical illness, and more medical
visits, to the extent that, overall, procrastinators suffer more stress and health problems.
Other reasons cited on why students procrastinate include fear of
failure and success, perfectionist expectations, as well as legitimate
activities that may take precedence over school work, such as a job."
(Πηγή: Wikipedia)
"..But in real life, you can’t avoid doing things. We have to earn a
living, do our taxes, have difficult conversations sometimes. Human life
requires confronting uncertainty and risk, so pressure mounts.
Procrastination gives a person a temporary hit of relief from this
pressure of “having to do” things, which is a self-rewarding behavior.
So it continues and becomes the normal way to respond to these
pressures.
Particularly prone to serious
procrastination problems are children who grew up with unusually high
expectations placed on them. Their older siblings may have been high
achievers, leaving big shoes to fill, or their parents may have had
neurotic and inhuman expectations of their own, or else they exhibited
exceptional talents early on, and thereafter “average” performances were
met with concern and suspicion from parents and teachers.
This was the part that made my heart sink
when I read it. Not that anybody was trying to make things difficult for
me, but I grew up feeling high expectations from the adults in my life
and myself. For most of my schooling, I was always in advanced programs,
always aced everything, and when I got anything less than an A, people
asked me what was wrong.
I also noticed other kids didn’t get this
treatment. They were congratulated for getting B’s and even C’s. So from
the feedback I got, I learned that a report card (of mine) with five
A’s and a B was indicative of a shortcoming somewhere, not success. I’ve
written about this before so
I won’t get into it here, but suffice it to say that I learned that the
downsides of being imperfect are far greater than the upsides of being
perfect.
Perfectionism breeds pessimism
This means that pushing projects ahead is — on the balance — a bad deal, because unless I’m pretty damn perfect there is much more pain to be had in doing that than pleasure."
"So that’s my simple, humble dream in life: to list a few things I’d like
to get done and go ahead and do them.
I could take over the world, if I
could only learn to do that."
(David Cain. Πηγή: thoughtcatalog.com)
