Procrastination in Your Home-Based Business: Waiting for the Right Time
Today we focus on another cause of procrastination – waiting for the right time and coupled with that is perfectionism. You may wonder how perfectionism could be viewed in a negative light and contribute to procrastination; but think about it! For the perfectionist, everything has to be just right; the timing, the circumstance, the product, and so on. In addition, these persons usually set extremely high standards for themselves and others that are difficult to meet. At the same time there is the fear that if they do not achieve these standards they will be viewed by others, but mostly themselves, as failures. The result is that fear of failure paralyzes them.
For many these are characteristics and personality traits are difficult to unlearn but the goal should be to avoid focusing on perfection and instead focus on performance and completing the tasks at hand. Very few things will ever align themselves perfectly therefore it's more important to decide that you will set a goal for a task to be completed in a specified time.
Procrastination also results from people thinking that they have to wait for just the right moment to do this or that. For example, your desk may be cluttered with numerous receipts that you have to move every time you need to get to certain files. It would be so much easier to file away the receipts immediately, but your thought is I'll wait until the middle of the month when… or I'll wait until I bring my gas receipts from the car…etc. Why wait for later? I recently heard someone say that 'NOW is the new later.' Could you make it a habit to file away every receipt on a daily basis or at least remove it from your desk to a specific location? It would be one less item to touch every day and in our home-based business, every moment is valuable.
