Only one in ten people can claim that they lose no productivity to procrastination. The rest of us tend to lose time on projects and add unneeded stress to our lives by putting things off until later.
Some revel in their procrastination and see no need to change things up and become more productive; this article is not for them. This is for the rest of the real estate investment professionals who would prefer to overcome this common quirk and gain more control over their schedule and workflow.
Find Your Why?
Only you can truly know why you procrastinate but a professor of psychology at De Paul University in Chicago managed to categorize procrastinators into three types. Each type requires a slightly different approach to solve their procrastination issues. You may find yourself procrastinating for different reasons at different times and need a combined approach to reducing procrastination.
Thrill Seekers
Adrenaline drives this type of procrastinator, particularly the adrenaline rush that comes with pushing work for delivery just under deadline. Most thrill seeker style procrastinators truly feel they perform their best work when challenged. If this sounds like you, you’ll want to focus on setting tighter deadlines so that you get the rush without the wasted time.
Avoiders
Avoiding work is avoiding judgment for this type of procrastinator. Driven partly by fear and largely subconscious messages, overcoming procrastination starts with working on your mindset and attitude. Whether it’s fear of failure or success that holds you back and keeps you in the procrastination zone, you need to address your thinking before you can address your actions.
Indecisive
The drive for perfection can shut down production with this type of procrastinator. Often described as Decision Paralysis, as a procrastinator of this type you’ll need to learn to take small risks and trust your intuition to move to the next level of productivity. As with an avoidant style procrastinator, addressing your mindset will be the key to making progress with procrastination.
Tools to Change Mindset
Procrastination is persistent because we often just pay lip-service to wanting to eliminate it. Attitude changes are hard work for being so easy. And the source of procrastination, whichever type you are, tend to be completely in your mind.
You’ve likely been to seminars or workshops or read books on positive thinking, being success minded, and valuing yourself – and have all the tools needed to eliminate procrastination already. You just have to use them.
It’s that easy. And that hard.