Procrastination Types - Life Coaching With a Smile

Of all the procrastination types there are, I know what type I am. I am an avoider. It occurred to me as I was writing this that 60 years ago my grandmother used to say “Once begun, ’tis half done.” I have told myself that a million times over the years to motivate myself to get started on something. It works! Action destroys procrastination!

A survey in 2015 found that, on average, a person loses over 55 days per year procrastinating, wasting around 218 minutes every day doing unimportant things.

Everyone waits till the last minute sometimes. But many procrastinators pay a significant price, from poor job performance to stress, financial problems, and relationship conflicts. Fortunately, just as anyone can endlessly delay, anyone can learn how to stop.

Why are there Procrastination Types?

There is much discussion on procrastination types. I have a list of five procrastination types that I have put together over the time I’ve been coaching. Learning your procrastination type is just a way to short-cut you to some ideas to help you. You may find yourself in more than one type, some do overlap. If you can find out what procrastination type you are, it will be easier for you to take charge of your responsibilities, conquer your procrastination and finish your tasks.

The Avoider

You are the person that avoids starting the project. Maybe you avoid thinking about it because you are a perfectionist and are afraid to start the task at hand. You stress-out about getting every detail right. Perhaps you worry so much about doing the project right that you’d rather do nothing then risk screwing up. It’s possible you start and then the “what ifs” move in and you can’t move forward. If you are a perfectionist or a worrier the result is the same: You don’t or can’t move forward.

Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder.

Shiny Ball

You are the person that sees and or looks for other things that catch their interest. It’s possible you start your project and then your mind wanders and you don’t finish the project, instead you start a new one. Or you get distracted by a person, or a thought that flitters through your mind and you reach for your phone.

The Planner Planner

You are the one that jumps on task and then begins to plan. Then re-plan. Do you dream of the perfect way to do this project and do it well. You are someone who enjoys making the ideal plan more than taking action. You are highly creative and hard working but find it hard to actually finish a task.

The Pressure Gauge

You say, “I work well under pressure.” By procrastinating you force yourself to be behind schedule and consequently have less time to tackle a task. Maybe because it forces you to concentrate, maybe because you have so little time you can’t hold out for perfection. You manufacture a crisis, deliberately pushing back work until the last minute. You are the optimist believing you know exactly how long something will take, leaving no room for something going wrong. Deadlines for you are exciting, but that pressure also causes stress. It also can make you manage the rest of your time poorly. Rushing from deadline to deadline is not sustainable.

Procrastination is like a credit card...

The Bee

You might be an Un-Busy Bee. You have trouble prioritizing the tasks because you have too many of them to choose from. Some of your tasks seem unworthy of your talent. You don’t know how to choose what is best for you to do so you invoke “I’m just so busy” so you can postpone making any decisions.

You might be a Busy Bee if you fill up your calendar and then find yourself overwhelmed. Though some of the busiest people get the most done, your busy bee procrastination may be a way to avoid something you should do, but don’t want to do.

The Value of Procrastination Types

Do you see how most of the characteristics of procrastinators have to do with mindset? Of all the procrastination types, have you identified one (or maybe even two) that describe you? If we can tweak our attitude, nudge our perspective it can help us stop procrastinating. Remember the phrase, “If you change the way you look at things the things you look at change.” The next article in this series will describe how doing even the smallest things can help us stop procrastinating.