Sarah Tan – Personal Development

At work and at home, people form relationships in which they depend on one another. Family life can be rocky or smooth depending on the ability of spouses and family members to divide the necessary home duties and follow through on their individual responsibilities. Relationships between co-workers also involve a level of trust that each member of the business team will contribute an adequate amount of work to a given assignment. In both of these circumstances, one person’s failure to do a fair share of the work can be devastating to the effectiveness of the family or work group and can also hinder people from trusting one another. Therefore, when procrastination becomes a significant influence in a person’s habits, both the practical and the emotional sides of the person’s family and work relationships will suffer.

In family relationships, there is always a large amount of work that needs to be accomplished in order for the home to run smoothly. Periodic tasks might include maintenance on a home or on appliances, work in the yard, laundry, cleaning, washing dishes, cooking, keeping a vehicle or vehicles in working order, and child care. If any of these chores are left out for a significant amount of time, the household will be unable to operate effectively. In cases where one family member gets behind in chores, especially due to a reasonable situation like an illness or the need to work extra hours at a job, other family members will probably be happy to work around the slowdown and even pick up the excess chores temporarily. However, once a family member habitually procrastinates for extended periods of time and leaves his or her part of house work unfinished, other family members might begin to resent the chores being left unfinished and being loaded down with the additional work. The situation can be especially tense if the procrastinator uses entertainment or games as a procrastination device, watching television or playing computer games while the other members of the household struggle with more than their share of chores. Regardless of whether the procrastinator is a spouse, parent, child, sibling or in-law, only an end to the procrastination and a responsible amount of work will remedy the strain that procrastinating can cause in a family.

In a business environment, procrastination can be similarly destructive. People who work full-time spend a majority of their time during the day with their co-workers, and the relationships between business team members are an important part of the social lives of professionals. When one member of a business team is a chronic procrastinator, the other team members often need to shoulder the procrastinator’s share of work to meet deadlines. And when members of the team each have a specific field of work, one person’s procrastination may leave the others unable to get the information they need to complete their own assignments. Resentments, distrust and hostility may result, particularly in cases where the entire team misses out on a bonus or other reward due to one member’s procrastination habits. And as in the event of procrastination at home, the only dependable method to better the situation is for the procrastinator to adopt whatever organizational and time management steps are requisite to accomplish a sensible amount of work.

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The difficulty of certain projects often provokes a desire to delay or otherwise waste time before getting down to business. This urge to procrastinate can affect people’s lives as an occasional temptation or as a nearly irresistible habit, hinging upon the temperament of the individual.

In three particular fields of activity, namely college, business and home life, procrastination can cause an especially detrimental effect. A closer look at the underlying factors for procrastination in each of these settings can help illuminate some of the influences in the decision to procrastinate.

For many students, procrastination emerges as a significant problem during the first years of college. The college procrastinator is frequently an individual who, for one of several possible reasons, did not learn effective time management strategies during high school. Often accustomed to high school assignments that are purely short term or that have been broken down into a series of littler assignments by the high school teachers, the college procrastinator is at a loss to correct to college’s long term assignments. In some examples, the college procrastinator underestimates the difficulty of a term report or end-of-semester project because the professor does not perpetually remind the class about the forthcoming deadline.

For this reason, the difficulties faced by the college procrastinator can be seen as a failure to adjust from a structured, regulated learning environment into an environment where independent time management skills are necessary. Once the need for discipline and organization has been recognized, a few elementary tools, such as a day planner, can help the college procrastinator organize a self-structured series of goals and deadlines for long-term assignments.

Whereas the college procrastinator might evade a difficult assignment by playing computer games or socializing, the business procrastinator is oft more subtle in his or her strategy. Rather than engaging in meaningless amusements, which might be punished if discovered, the business procrastinator often wastes time on activities that are in fact part or his or her job description but that are not the most important tasks at the moment.

In some cases, a lack of confidence in the ability to successfully complete difficult assignments compels the business procrastinator to pursue easy, straightforward minor tasks. In other situations, an inability to recognise high- and low-priority assignments causes the business procrastinator to perceive that the simple jobs are just as crucial as the complicated ones, leaving the business procrastinator no cause to pursue the more Herculean tasks.

To remedy this circumstance, the business procrastinator first must learn to recognize which tasks have the most potential to impact the success of the business itself and to affect the course of business in the long term. Once this has been achieved, the business procrastinator can analyze long-term, complicated tasks into a series of manageable deadlines so that it's not quite so intense.

Instead of being unable to face a deadline, the home-life procrastinator is often ill at ease with the never-ending nature of daily home-related chores. Yard work, home repairs, cleaning and meal preparation can all assume the uninspiring role of routine inconveniences in a person’s life. As incomplete chores accumulate over time, the home-life postponer begins to feel the pressure of house work invading the joys of routine life.

To counter this situation, a specific time should be set aside each week to schedule a reasonable number of weekly chores. By naming which tasks should be accomplished on which day, the home-life procrastinator can gain control over the amount of work. And by fixing certain tasks to certain days, the procrastinator could stop feeling blameworthy about any unfinished chores provided that he or she has attained the chores earmark for the present day.

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