Procrastination = perfectionism?

Procrastinating Teen

There are so many things that get in the way of a young person succeeding these days. But the last thing that they need to have get in their ways… is themselves. And get… That is exactly what so many people do. They stop themselves from succeeding before they get out of the gate… by procrastinating.

They have a lot of good reasons.
They range from
“I’m lazy!” to
“I don’t have a good system” to
“I’ll get to it soon” as well as the classic
“It’s not my fault”.

For a great many of these people, the real problem is they are afraid of failing. Even more so, they are afraid of not reaching their very high standards of perfectionism.

It’s not that they don’t care, it’s that they care too much and it cripples them.

Now that I know that, what do I do?

First, just decide to do five minutes a day of something that you need to do before you start video gaming or watching your shows or whatever you spend a great deal of your time on.

Tick it off on a daily chart so that you can see the days that you do this and slowly add a few more minutes every few days of success until you’re doing 30 to 45 minutes a day at that particular time.

Get into the habit of not judging what you were writing but understanding that: “there is no such thing as writing, only rewriting”. That means you’re not supposed to get it perfect the first, second, or even the third time. I have probably rewritten this simple article about 10 times before you get to see it.

The people I work with learn the whole process over a period of six months to free themselves from perfectionism. Even the very best of them have times when things throw them off and they go back to procrastinating (I have days like that too) but once you but once you have the system built in and you know it works, you can always make it work again and again. And it will always work.

Author: Ken_Rabow

Ken Rabow is the Mentor's Mentor for Troubled Teens, Young Adults and their Families