Do you have a procrastination habit you can’t seem to get rid of?
People use all sorts of little expressions to give themselves permission to procrastinate.
Too often, they don’t recognize that they’re trying to procrastinate when they use these words.
However, if you’re aware of saying these phrases out of habit, you can alert yourself to the fact that you’re delaying a task and procrastinating.
Here are 5 common expressions that lead to procrastination.
1. “Just for now.”
Have you ever said to yourself, “I’ll put this here, just for now”?
Your intention is to come back in a little while, move the object, and put it away. Nine times out of 10, the object stays in that “just for now” spot for a long time.
Before you know it, you’ve piled a few more things in that just for now spot, and then you have a massive stack of clutter.
2. “Later” and “someday.”
You tell yourself, “I’ll deal with this later.”
You don’t want to do it now, because it’s a huge stack of stuff. You think you don’t have time now to take everything to their assigned homes.
Maybe the real problem is that the objects don’t have assigned homes and you don’t know where to put them. So, the “just for now” spot is their temporary home until it doesn’t work anymore.
Telling yourself that you’ll do it later is a problem because “later” is not a time. “Later” never happens, just like “someday.”
When clients say they want to wait to do something “someday,” I always tell them that we have Sunday through Monday.
There’s no such day as “someday,” so “someday” will never come. And whatever it is they want to do won’t get done, unless they schedule it.
3. “It will take too much time.”
Quite often we overestimate the amount of time something will take to do. We give ourselves permission not to do it by saying to ourselves, “It will take too much time.”
So, when we want to delay starting a task, we tell ourselves it will take too much time or more time than we have available at this moment.
We delay and then the question remains: When do we ever have exactly enough time?
4. “I’ll get around to it.”
Have you ever said, “I’ll get around to it,” in response to someone asking you to do something?
Joe Ferrari, the author of Still Procrastinating: The No Regrets Guide To Getting It Done, has a chip that he passes out to his audience members during his talks. Imprinted on the chip are the words “round2it.”
He tells the audience to hang onto the chip to remind themselves to do whatever they said they’d get around to doing.
This expression, because it doesn’t have a day or time associated with it, is another delay tactic.
You never specifically say when you’ll get something done. You just indicate that when the spirit moves you, you will get around to it.
5. “Just this once.”
Saying this gives you permission to slack off or avoid completing a task.
“Just this once, I’m not going to fold the sheets. I’m going to leave them in the laundry basket until I’m ready to put them on the bed.”
“Just this once, I’m not going to empty the dishwasher. I’ll use the clean dishes from the dishwasher until the sink is full and there are no more clean dishes to use.”
Have you ever used this expression, and then had it backfire on you?
This will make it easier to recognize procrastinating.
When you become aware of the ways you trick yourself and give yourself permission to avoid tasks or delay making decisions, then it’s easier to recognize the fact that you’re procrastinating.
Did you notice a theme in this list? Most of these expressions would not help you delay if you assigned a day and a time to the task at hand.
If this is a habit you want to change, then keep this list handy and understand that when you use these expressions, you’re hijacking your own efforts to get things done.