These Procrastination Excuses Won’t Work

You think your excuses are valid reasons to procrastinate?

Well, think again.

Here are some of the common excuses you should definitely avoid.

Not good at managing time

Time management is a myth. Nobody manages time. You need to manage how you deal with things.

Chronic procrastinators should ditch the two-hour time-management workshop, Ferrari says, and opt instead for cognitive behavior therapy that can teach how to modify behavior to accomplish more.

Lives are busier than before

Procrastinators often justify putting things off saying that they’re just too busy. But this excuse doesn’t pass muster since everyone else is just as busy. In fact, everyone has been just as busy for centuries.

This is a very insulting excuse to our ancestors. We may have replaced plowing the fields with answering emails, but there have been 24 hours in a day for centuries.

Only works best under pressure

Procrastinators think that they perform best when pressed against a deadline, but 30 years of research shows this isn’t the case.

In experiments where people were asked to work as quickly as possible to complete a task, those who identified themselves as procrastinators actually made more mistakes than the non-procrastinators, showing that procrastinators actually perform worse when up against a deadline.

Not a procrastinator, but a perfectionist

Although both procrastinators and perfectionists like to take their time, there’s a big difference between procrastinators and perfectionists and it lies in the motivation for delaying.

Procrastinators take their time because they want to get along. They want you to like them.

A procrastinator will save being judged on their work in order to continue being liked, or perceived as talented even if perhaps they aren’t.

Perfectionists, on the other hand, are concerned with getting ahead. They want their work to be error-free so they will advance in their career, or grow their business.

Afraid of failure

Procrastinators often make excuses in order to keep up their public image. Afraid of being judged on their work, procrastinators would rather people think that they lack effort than ability. At least if they lack effort, it gives the impression that perhaps they do have ability.

If a procrastinator never finishes a task, they can’t be judged on it. Procrastinators are very social-conscious. Not only do procrastinators fear failure, they also fear success.

Rather than feel the pressure of expectations upon them, procrastinators would rather others simply assume that they’re lazy than take the risk of failing at something.

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