Hello everyone, this is Helen Huang @ Organizing, based in Beijing, China.In order to better learn and practice the YiXiaoNeng Time Management System, after finished publishing 100 Chinese articles, I decided to continue writing and publishing a daily English article in another 100 days based on the "YeWuBin Time Management 100 Episodes" audio program. Today is the 127th day.
Today's topic is:The Procrastination Formula
Today we will talk about the harmful effects of procrastination.
In previous lectures, I talked about how to efficiently manage your time by converting your offline life into an online life.The offline life is the hurried, inefficient, non-productive, unfulfilling life that most people live from 7AM to 11PM. The online life is one where we awake with the sun and go about our day using healthy automatic habits like the cold shower, 10-minute meditation, and morning diary writing.
It is not easy to change your habits to the online life.But if you can successfully do this, then your life will be very exciting. In short, the offline life is a lifestyle comprised of many bad habits, while the online life is full of productive and healthy habits.
In the offline life:We delay our sleep at night instead choosing to lay on the bed socializing on Facebook or WeChat. We sleep late in the morning, and delay getting out to complete tasks; and we rush to get to work on time, often arriving late. While at work we don't actually work, choosing instead to chat and joke with co-workers in the morning, and leave important work to be done in the afternoon, which we push until the evening giving ourselves a great amount of stress in the attempt to make the deadline.
The offline life is the procrastinated life.Procrastination has a damaging effect on our health and well-being. If procrastination is left unchecked, the harmful effects can be so great that it can kill a person! The harmful effects are associated with continuously performing a series of harmful effects over a long period of time. These behaviors include:
1. Staying out late at night and sleeping late at night;
2. Not eating breakfast;
3. Rarely exercising;
4. Eating a single kind of food usually full of sugar and fat and lacking in nutrients;
Does this sound familiar to you? Does this sound at all like your lifestyle?The effects of procrastination are in direct conflict with good lifestyle, so procrastination could be very dangerous.
Research shows that those who procrastinate tend to eat more, sleep less and drink wine.For example, studies have shown that undergraduates at the end of a semester who have not prepared for their exams or projects until the last minute, tend to go the hospital more often for common colds and the flu than those who do prepare or earlier in the semester when the stress levels are not as high.
In the general population, procrastinators are more stressed, less healthy and exercise less than those who do not procrastinate.Those with poor habits and lack of structure in their daily lives tend to behave in ways that are less efficient and more harmful to their well-being, such as avoiding exercise, eating worse foods, smoking, drinking, and even taking drugs. They also drive dangerously, and commit acts of violence and even commit suicide ......
So today I want to warn you：Hear my message to you about how dangerous a lifestyle of procrastination can be to you.
Now, several of you listening to this recording at this very moment will think I am exaggerating that I am blowing the harmful effects of procrastination way out of proportion. If you think this, I'm here to tell you that you are quite wrong. Procrastination will lead to harmful habits and over the course of months and years they can kill a person!
Take a look at your lifestyle and then think hard about why you do things in this way you do them. Is it because you don't prepare well? Is it because you don't eat well or exercise or because you don't use your time efficiently? Think deeply about whether or not the way you live your life today will result in a better or worse version of yourself in 1 year, 10 years, 25 years?
Before we wrap up for today, I want to share some information from research studies about procrastination.There is a book called "The Psychology of Procrastination" which describes four reasons for procrastination:
1. Fear of failure;
2. Discomfort with delegating tasks to others;
3. Being too easily distracted and susceptible to impulse actions;
4. The perception that the distance between the task and the final reward is too great.
These 4 symptoms of procrastination can be summarized in a formula. The formula isU= E×V / I×D. What does it stand for?
1. U stands for your utility or the desire to complete a specific task. So this formula tells you how will you able to complete a task?
2. E stands for the expectation of success.
3. V stands for the happiness you feel about this task.
4. I is how important the task is. So if you can expect to succeed and the task is important, those will increase your ability to complete the task.
5. D is your personal sensitivity to delay. That is, you tend to delay tasks that have no immediate rewards such as exercising and instead focus on tasks with immediate rewards like eating fattening foods.
So If you are high in the desire to complete a task and you have confidence that you will succeed, and if you are able to minimize distractions and live with delayed gratification, you will procrastinate much less.
Once again…
E refers to the confidence that you will succeed;
V refers to the extent to which we are happy completing tasks;
I refers to how easily you are distracted;
D refers to how long it will take to get a reward for your actions.
So before we go, think about the dangers of procrastination, and how habitual procrastination can kill a person. Because it prevents healthy living and increases stress, and stress can kill.Think about how procrastination drains your energy and puts you in a vicious cycle of more stress leading to poor behaviors.
We have just analyzed the 4reasons for procrastination. In our next lecture, we will focus on the skills and habits you can employ to finally overcome procrastination!
Thank you being with me together today. Have a wonderful day!
