Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you have a huge deadline, but before sitting down to work, you engage yourself in a number of elaborate preparatory activities. For example, you convince yourself to do a little exercise, believing that it’ll help you get into the zone; or perhaps you feel the need to prepare and eat a gourmet meal, just so you won’t be bothered by hunger later on. If this sounds familiar, then you’ve probably been guilty of procrastination at one point or another.

Contrary to popular belief, procrastination does not stem from laziness. This act of putting off a task until the very last minute is often the result of giving precedence to more interesting, easier, and less urgent tasks.

Think about it, procrastinators don’t just lie there when they have a deadline; they’re out doing everything and anything they possibly can, except of course the obvious. So what exactly is the reason for this avoidance?

Procrastination occurs for a number of reasons: the individual is a perfectionist; the individual has overestimated the time they have to complete their work; the individual feels as though the task is overwhelming, or the individual believes that they must be in the perfect mood to complete their work.

For the perfectionist, the fear of not being able to complete the task in a perfect manner holds them back. Often times, they’ll spend more time thinking about how to go about their task perfectly, rather than actually working on it.

For the ‘over estimator’, procrastination is the result of believing that they have all the time in the world. These individuals often wait until the very last minute to start working on their task. Not only do they overestimate their time, but once they start working, they realize that they’ve underestimated the work, and don’t have enough time to complete the task successfully.

For those individuals for whom the work seems overwhelming, it is often their fear and anxiety of not being capable enough to complete the work that holds them back. Rather than tackling the issue head on, they continually push it aside and avoid it until the very last possible minute.

Finally for those individuals, who believe that they must be in the perfect mood or in the perfect setting to work on their task, they often find themselves against the wall trying to meet their deadline. By waiting and waiting for the perfect moment, they come to a time where they have no choice but to work on their task. Often times, this moment is more stressful than pleasant.

Regardless of why procrastination occurs, it yields the same result: not being able to work on a task until the very last minute. So how can one overcome this problem?