Procrastination is the act of delaying or postponing something. Everyone in the world has procrastinated at least once. There are fake and real procrastinators. I am a real procrastinator.

The fake procrastinator gets his work done and in between his work time he plays a couple games on the computer. He might even check his social media to see if anything is happening and will get back to work again. When a real procrastinator wants to know how to stop procrastinating, a fake procrastinator might tell them to just “stop procrastinating.” It’s basically like telling an obese person to stop overeating. It simply won’t work.

Real procrastinators will have a paper due on one day. They will plan ahead on how much time they have and how long it would take them to write the paper. For example, they will find useless stuff to keep them busy and say that it is more important than the paper they need to write. When a real procrastinator gets smart, he will figure out that he can wake up early the next morning to write the paper and rush to have it done by the deadline, but he might just not do it all together.

I will get an assignment and instead of doing it, I will clean my room and organize all my papers. You get more creative on how to entertain yourself instead of doing your assignment.

The mind of procrastinators is a tad bit different than non-procrastinators. The non-procrastinator will get distracted for awhile but then he has a rational, decision-making part in his brain. The procrastinator will have the same kind of set-up in his brain, but he is also co-existing with a pet, the so-called Instant Gratification Monkey. The pet is what makes a person distracted and helps him procrastinate.

Procrastinators will sell themselves short because they spend their time doing unnecessary things. You are basically ruining your life for no apparent reason, but in the moment you feel you are getting stuff done. You will end up waiting until the last minute to do your work, and this is what causes your panic.

Many procrastinators will make a list of things they need to do and make their list overflow with unneeded things. They will choose the smallest task on their list and feel accomplished while they have about 24 other things left to do. You have to have enough inner strength to defeat the procrastinator in your mind.

You can not avoid procrastinating at least once or twice. You can improve, but you just have to want it. After reading this article, what kind of procrastinator are you?