I believe that teens today are working harder than ever before. The idea, that teens don’t work hard, I believe is a lie. Teens are multi-tasking more now than ever. Almost every teen I know volunteers time to a cause, is involved in sports and extracurricular activities and of course manages to have some sort of personal life. I don’t believe that teens today have a lack of work ethic, what they may have is a lack of ability to prioritize, which then leads to procrastination.
How has procrastination kept you from achieving success?
I have recently been getting a lot of questions around procrastination and how to move past it. Procrastination is a common bad habit that almost everyone has to get over. Procrastination often times starts during youth, the preteen and teenage years, and develops from there. If you are a parent who has watched your teen push off chores, homework and other tasks, you’ve probably had many arguments around this and find yourself nagging your child. This, of course, is not a fun experience for either parties.
Procrastination is by definition the action of delaying or postponing something. In today’s post I want to take a look at why people (teens and adults) procrastinate. Before you start implementing strategies to overcome procrastination, it is fundamental to get to the root as to why we are procrastinating in the first place. Once you create this awareness you can start implementing strategies to overcome it. Here are some reasons as to why individuals fail to take action. Take a look, and see what areas you or your teen may fall in.
- You are concerned with other people’s opinion of you. This is probably the biggest reason as to why people do not move forward in taking action. The fear of people’s opinion of a failure is what keeps so many people from taking action and tackling goals. For the most part, we don’t want to let our friends and family down. But there comes a point in time when you must separate your goals from the opinions of others. This is why it is fundamental for parents to praise the process (sticking with a difficult assignment, a challenging course, seeking out help at school) and not the outcome (the grade). Grades, job status, titles do not define a person, character does.
- You seek constant advice from others. Like the previous point, people who fall into this category have fear of making wrong decisions and are challenged to follow their instinct. There may be lack the confidence in decision-making because of further fear of letting others down. Seeking constant advice, fools us into thinking we are taking action, but what is really happening is we are stalling to take action.
- Do you suffer from FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)? For some people the idea that everyone else is having fun without them is too much and they say “yes” to doing everything. Typically speaking, these people do things that are important for everyone else, because of fear of letting people down or not seeming like they are part of the group. So as a result, these individuals do what everyone else wants first, before doing what matters to them.
- You enjoy everything in excess. Some people will sleep until noon, binge watch TV, play video games for hours. Some people can just hangout for ever. Typically speaking, these people lack discipline, do not take responsibility and have absolutely no connection to the outcome. It is likely, that they are often not held accountable, and have accepted not achieving. People who fall into this category have not been taught the importance to work first and play later, instead for them, they feed every indulgence and do not have any connection to commitments and goals.
Now that we have taken a look as to why people procrastinate, we can start to think about changing the habit. If you find yourself struggling in one of these areas and want to work further on getting past them, schedule a FREE 30-minute Power Session. CLICK HERE.
Much love,
Andrea
