Howdy! My name is Zach, and I'm an engineering major at A&M who happens to love the arts and humanities. Sadly, with an engineer's curriculum, my opportunity for expression is severely limited. A week and a half ago, I was lucky enough to find The Odyssey as an outlet for my creative expression. I immediately became giddy with the numerous ideas and topics and styles of work I would publish here blazing through my mind. And yet, after almost a week and a half, I have found it difficult to keep any of these ideas on the page. My strict, unwavering disdain for imperfection has prevented me from committing to any one idea, working alongside my ability to craft excuses, to convince myself that writing could wait. For the past couple days, I have delved into introspection, asking, "Why do I procrastinate, worrying about details and perfection, when they prove to be taller hurdles than the challenge in front of me?". I have since come up with an explanation and solution for any of you out there who relate to my plight:
Fear of Failure
Oftentimes, it seems, in college students and those pursuing higher education, ego is the largest barrier to success. Consistently being conditioned to believe that your abilities and intellect outmatch your peers not only builds an unhealthy ego but in tandem with the raised expectations, I personally find myself constantly afraid to disappoint or lose the respect of the people who support me. When anxiety about failure, and the social repercussions it has, peak, we search for the most painless and easy way to avoid it. This tends to result in avoidance, or in simpler terms, procrastination. You can't fail if you simply quit, right? No one can be disappointed if you never fail, and you can never fail if you never try. Procrastination is simply the easy way not to try, all you have to do is save the task at hand for a "later" that never arrives.
The Cure
In my personal experience battling procrastination, the most helpful tip I have is to focus on how completing the task at hand aids you in achieving your long and more importantly, your short-term goals. When you contextualize all that you do with how it helps you achieve some broad, blurry, long-term goal, your motivation wavers. If you simply re-frame your actions into small steps towards shorter-term goals, it helps to keep you focused and more importantly, sane! A personal example for me would be my long-term goal of matriculating into a medical school. When classes prove difficult, work proves exhausting, and my hobbies prove uninteresting, medical school seems too far out a goal to sufficiently motivate me. To combat procrastination, you must have a strong and healthy will to fight. My will to fight is reinvigorated when I re-frame this blurry, long-term goal into simply getting an A in a current class, or trying, each day, to remember that I love my job, and now simply taking my writing one point at a time. Sometimes seeing the big picture is important, but it is just as important to not allow this big picture to overwhelm you. The final cure for procrastination is simply bravery. You need to be confident in your abilities. You have the potential to achieve all you can dream, but you can never succeed if you are constantly judging yourself by the metrics of others. Remember that, in the end, a couple of small failures sting less than the anxiety and regret that comes when all those "later"s come crashing down on top of you.
