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Procrastination — the act of postponing tasks until the last possible minute — is common and really damages productivity.
It might seem harmless on the face of it, but chronic procrastination can have several negative effects on your life and work and may even hold you back from achieving the level of success you crave in both your personal and professional life.
We’ve talked about procrastination on this blog before, but we didn’t really dive deep into the impact procrastination can have on our productivity. We thought it was time we revisited the subject. So, read on to discover the main ways procrastination impacts productivity.
Why We Procrastinate
Although we have gone into this elsewhere, it is worth briefly noting the main reasons we procrastinate before we go into how it affects productivity.
The main reasons we procrastinate include:
- Our fear of failure.
- We are daunted by the size of a task.
- Our biological tendency towards becoming distracted.
- Our failure to create an action plan.
- A tendency toward perfectionism.
For more detail, see why we procrastinate.
5 Ways Procrastination Impacts Productivity
We all know procrastination stops you from being productive, but how exactly does it affect us?
Let’s find out.
It Increases Stress
One of the most significant ways procrastination impacts us is by increasing the amount of stress we experience. When we leave tasks until the last minute, we rush to complete them and struggle to focus. Read our post on why we struggle to focus for more on the subject. Thus, many of us end up feeling overwhelmed, and frustrated because we produce poor quality work because we’ve put it off so long and put ourselves under immense time pressure.
Rushing to finish work and becoming anxious about it can also mean we get lower quality sleep, and not enough of it, which can also have a detrimental effect on productivity. Constantly feeling overwhelmed and anxious can cause the stress to manifest as physical symptoms such as stomach aches or headaches. This can make it even more difficult to work effectively and be productive because you’ll have less physical and mental energy.
Moreover, if we continually produce work of inferior quality because we make a habit of procrastination, it can undermine our confidence and lead to feelings of inadequacy, which can damage productivity further.
We can see, then, that all these factors combined can have a devastating effect on productivity and can prevent us from achieving what we want in life. This is why increased stress is one of the most crucial ways procrastination affects us.
Soon, we’ll discover how procrastination can lead to a loss of self-discipline. Next, though, we’ll see how procrastinating can mean you miss opportunities.
You Can Miss Out on Opportunities by Not Completing a Task
When you put off a decision or procrastinate on a given task, you’re actively choosing to do something else. This implies you have not chosen to pursue the potential benefits you may derive from finishing that task or coming to a decision.
By procrastinating, then, you have incurred an opportunity cost.
For instance, if you don’t give yourself sufficient time to finish an important project because you procrastinated, you could potentially miss out on a promotion that would have represented a significant career advancement.
Another example is if you delay choosing the right person for a position within the company, you may miss out on the chance to delegate some of your work to someone who has more experience or is better suited to it, thereby freeing you up to do what you’re best at or to dedicate yourself to more vital tasks.
It’s time to find out how procrastination affects our self-discipline.
It Can Lead to a Loss of Self-Discipline
If you’ve developed a habit of leaving things until the last minute, it can be hard for you to meet deadlines and keep things on track. Over time this can lead to a lack of self-discipline in many areas, including time management and task completion.
Procrastinators may have trouble building habits that are essential for productivity, making people prone to putting things off less productive in the first place. As such people struggle to form healthy habits, they may not have the best routines to maintain a good sleep schedule and get regular exercise and may therefore have less energy.
Add to this the idea that, as procrastinators continue to miss deadlines, they begin to doubt their ability to complete the work they’re assigned. As a result, they lose motivation and no longer see the need to practice self-discipline which makes it still harder for them to be productive.
Want to learn how to practice self-discipline? Check out our article on how to build self-discipline.
Your Confidence Takes a Hit
Guilt can become an issue if you keep procrastinating because as you see you’re failing to accomplish your goals. You begin to lose confidence which can set you back in both your professional and personal life.
If you have low self-esteem, no faith in your own abilities, and lack confidence, you’ll be less open to learning new things, such as how to be productive. Similarly, you’ll be less receptive to constructive criticism and will therefore be less likely to improve yourself.
It Can Hamper Your Ability to Work with Others
If you’re working on something together as a team and miss a deadline because you procrastinated, that affects the whole team. It can cause friction and resentment amongst team members and managers, making it tough to work together well.
Procrastinators may receive less support from their colleagues and supervisors because they perceive them as not being as committed as others, and people who are not to be trusted with an important task. In consequence, people who procrastinate may miss out on opportunities to have fun learning things together.
Wrapping Up
Procrastination, then, can hold us back, and prevent us from being truly productive and becoming successful. It can lead to more stress, decreased self-esteem, a loss of confidence, and more. It can engender guilt, cause tension in relationships with co-workers, and make it hard to maintain healthy habits designed to help improve productivity.
You must find ways to conquer procrastination if you want to achieve your dreams in life. Check out our post on 4 habits that can become sneaky ways to procrastinate, so you can begin to learn how to tackle it.
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