Procrastination affects your health
There is no doubt that it is very common for people to postpone their daily chores. From time to time, each of us is being lazy or tired to perform certain tasks, putting them off for a “better time.” But how to make sure it does not become a habit? After all, procrastination affects not only the failure of the schedule but most important — our health.
I am sure you have once faced consequences of these very familiar situations: e.g. getting up later than expected, going to sleep not having done your job and/or going out instead of doing what you have to do. While some people are happy with their procrastinator lifestyle, others definitely are not. It requires a lot of self-discipline to actually overcome this habit and not many people realize the effect procrastination makes on our health. So let’s get into the details.
According to the Thesaurus Dictionary, procrastination means “putting off or delaying, especially something requiring immediate attention.” When something requires immediate attention, it becomes our first priority. Not performing that very important task stepwise leads us to the negative outcome. Subsequently, that energy causes detrimental effects on our mental health, thereafter, our physical health deteriorates, too. In fact, Canadian researchers say that procrastination leads to serious diseases of the heart and blood vessels. Such data were obtained from a study in which more than 900 people took part when experts divided them into two groups. The first group included those suffering from cardiovascular diseases, and the second group involved only completely healthy participants. As a result, it turned out that people from the first group are several times more likely to postpone important things for later, than participants from the second group. It sounds like a very lucky coincidence, however, it is worth to muse on fall to thinking.
But, the tendency to postpone things for later is not always explained by laziness. Sometimes, in order to overcome the habit of delaying the execution of duties, you just need to use some simple psychological techniques. For example, tell your confidant about your serious decision. When you tell something important to a person you trust, it is very hard to give up fulfilling your promise. Track your time! One day, just take a piece of paper and a pen to write down what you do every single hour. Try to make everything carefully and honestly, because deceiving yourself you only harm the strategy. Do not forget to encourage yourself when you step over the threshold of procrastination. Thus, you motivate yourself to even greater productivity, which, as a result, will only bring you emotional fulfillment.
Last but not least, the fight against procrastination is not easy. In his book, a famous American speaker and business coach Jim Rohn explained: “We all must experience two kinds of pain: the pain of discipline and the pain of regret. The difference is that discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.” We always need to remember that nothing is given easily. However, step-by-step, we can achieve anything.
