The disease of tomorrow. The habit of putting off important things until later is dangerous.

I will begin to truly live after I change jobs or pay off my debts, or divorce my husband... How many of us are there who will finally be happy right away?.. Quite a lot. Often people come up with excuses for themselves not to live for today. It's always easier to put things off until later. Whether this “later” will come is unknown. After 10, 20, 30 years, the realization comes that life was lived in vain and that there was nothing good in it. All this happens to people who have delayed life syndrome - one of the most common diseases of modern society. Read more about it in our article.

About delayed life syndrome

The English writer Rudyard Kipling first spoke about delayed life syndrome. True, the term itself appeared much later.

In one of his books, the author described the life of the British in the colony. They were looking forward to getting rich and returning to England, buying a house there in the countryside, walking the dog - and then, in their opinion, that wonderful and happy life would begin. But time passed, the British grew old and they no longer had the strength to return to their homeland. Rudyard Kipling then wrote that “they die without ever beginning to live.”

Enough time has passed since then (by the way, Kipling died in 1936 at the age of 70), but the situation has only worsened.

“This phenomenon in our country has become widespread in the North, in the provinces, and in big cities too, when people do not yet live, but believe that after some achievements, purchases or events, their real life will begin, but for now they are just preparing for it. There are normal achievements that take a year, two, three, five years (for example, to graduate from a university), and here we can say that a person lives the achievement scenario. But if such a scenario is postponed for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, then we are already talking about the fact that a person does not live a real life, but rather lives in preparation for it. Naturally, neurotic phenomena begin, whether a person wants it or not,” says Doctor of Psychology Vladimir Serkin, who coined the term “delayed life syndrome.”

Stages of delayed life syndrome

Delayed living syndrome, like other diseases, has several stages.

• Being at the first stage, a person begins to be tormented by vague doubts: “what am I doing here” or “why do I need this”... At this stage, the individual does not yet understand what exactly went wrong and where he should be, if not here.
• At the second stage, a person realizes what he needs. He knows specifically what needs to be done to achieve his goal and become happy.
• At the third stage, it is necessary to make a firm decision - “to do or not to do”, “to change or not to change”, “to say or not to say”, etc. By the way, the longer this stage lasts, the more difficult it is to make this decision and realize your dream.

Causes

The development of delayed life syndrome is influenced by several factors, including:

• Hereditary predisposition.

There is no clear relationship between delayed life syndrome and its transmission from generation to generation. But if there are mentally ill people in the family, then the chances that you will develop this mental disorder increase several times.

• Wrong upbringing.

Many patients notice that the habit of procrastination began in early childhood. Parents, busy with their own lives, forgot about the child and did not pay due attention to him and his actions. Some, on the contrary, were overly protective and encouraged such actions of their children, allowing them to do nothing. Children got used to inactivity very quickly. Growing up, they could no longer be responsible for themselves and their lives.

“If a child feels that everyone around him lives for him, and does not solve their problems, then this can cause negative consequences in the personality structure: he will get used to the fact that those around him live for him, and after 25 years it will be very difficult to rebuild,” - says Vladimir Serkin.

• High employment.

In the course of numerous studies, scientists have discovered another pattern. It turned out that delayed life syndrome very often occurs in people with a busy schedule and irregular working hours. Such individuals never sit still and are constantly doing something. The problem is that all this often does not bring them pleasure, so they make even more efforts to change their lives for the better. Dreaming about the future, they stop enjoying the present. All this leads to constant consolations like “be patient, there’s still a little bit left.”

• Diffidence.

If a person is not confident in himself, then he will doubt his own abilities. Such people will avoid responsibility and making any decisions by any means. Such a habit of postponing things for later, as a rule, is born on the path of developing a person as an individual.

• Emotional instability.

People who are constantly under stress are afraid to make any decisions. In this way they try to protect themselves from everything bad that can happen to them. The thought that there is no need to change anything today calms the nervous system of an emotionally depressed person for a while. Psychologists say that this reason more than others influences the occurrence of delayed life syndrome in an individual. Due to round-the-clock tension, people begin to run away not only from responsibility, but also from today.

Rescue measures

It's actually simple. To get rid of the postponed life syndrome, you just need to force yourself to do something.

“You need to do something to achieve your dreams, so as not to turn into Oblomov. As for the recommendation - start living now - it is indisputable, probably for everyone, like many similar recommendations. That is, love yourself now for who you are, but make yourself even better,” Serkin is sure.

According to the doctor of psychological sciences, in order for everything to work out, in addition to the dream in your head, there must also be intermediate stages. You need to understand what exactly needs to be done to change your life for the better; how long will it take; what hardships will have to be endured in order to achieve the goal, etc.

“If we talk about the structure of activity, then before the result there must be a plan, there must be means, there must be tools, there must be a goal, and all these intermediate stages that are before the result, they disappear in these dreams. And if they are not there, then, accordingly, there is no result,” says the psychologist.

When I read the article, I was overcome with a feeling of sadness. Delayed life syndrome is truly a huge problem in our lives. It feels like we are not living at all in pursuit of the moment for which many years of waiting will pass. However, I categorically disagree with the opinion of Vladimir Serkin. If you constantly strive for self-improvement, that same unrealistic level of aspirations develops, which causes self-esteem to suffer and leads to a “stop” in life.

On the contrary, I see a way out in stopping striving for results and developing a kind of philosophy of “not giving a damn.” Then a happy life can truly return to a person. But this is difficult to do. Looking at other people's photos on social networks, paying attention to lucrative offers and easy (as it seems to many) successes of others, people begin to create new goals for themselves, failure to achieve which leads to the development of delayed life syndrome.

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Procrastination – what is it and how to deal with it?!

Almost every person is familiar to varying degrees with this psychological state when he urgently needs to do something important, but he repeatedly puts it off until later. Moreover, for completely far-fetched reasons. For example, he needs to first smoke, drink coffee or respond to some message on a social network. But the work is not done, even if these are the person’s direct work responsibilities. Psychologists call this state procrastination. We can also say that procrastination is an emotional reaction to the tasks facing a person that causes psychological discomfort.

The state of procrastination can be divided into 2 main types:

Tense. A person loses the sense of time, experiences constant stress and nervous overload. He does not have a clear understanding of his goals in life. He is unsure of himself and indecisive. Reduced self-esteem;

Relaxed. A person, instead of doing business, a person spends time on entertainment and other activities that do not bother him.

How does procrastination manifest itself? Symptoms by which you can identify it

Let's take this situation for example. A person has a desire to do some super important thing. Anticipating all the complexities of the task and feeling its scale, a person approaches it in a state of emotional uplift.

And suddenly his motivation plummets. This is the first symptom. The outlined plans are not followed and the awareness of the scale of the upcoming work no longer causes joyful anticipation, but wild fear. Or a person loses interest in the matter and finds a bunch of reasons why nothing needs to be done right now.

Well, the third symptom is when time drags on until the very last moment. At the same time, many excuses are made for their inaction. Then all the work is done in an emergency, deadlines are missed, and the quality leaves much to be desired. All this causes troubles at work and other negative consequences.

At the same time, a person experiences a feeling of guilt and stress, and is tormented by pangs of conscience. He realizes how dissatisfied those around him are with his inactivity. However, the same situation is repeated again and again.

Why does procrastination occur? Causes of the condition

There are several theories, but not one of them is universal. So, here are some causes of procrastination syndrome:

1. Predisposition to stress. People who cannot cope with stress tend to procrastinate. A major source of stress and anxiety is fear of what the future may hold. Hence the subconscious postponement of the moment when the result of the work should appear;

2. Perfectionism. The constant pursuit of perfection prevents you from completing work on time;

3. Subconscious fear of success. A person is afraid that if he stands out from the crowd, he will become the object of criticism and increased demands.

What should those who are overcome by procrastination do? Treating the condition of constant procrastination

Time management will help you cope with procrastination. This is a discipline that deals with the management of a person’s own time. Time management offers several techniques to reduce procrastination. But this is a separate topic, which we nevertheless pointed out. We'll just give you some advice.

Dividing time into categories. You need to correctly categorize all your affairs according to two parameters: importance and urgency.

Plan your activities. The whole day needs to be planned in advance, preferably in the evening. Once you have a written list, you should stick to it. The main value of the list is its visibility. The question of what to do at the present moment is removed from your brain. Of course, you can swap the items on the list and make other corrections, but the main thing is that you know exactly what needs to be done and when, because the list is right in front of your eyes.

Learn to distribute your efforts. Otherwise, it will not be possible to avoid tearing. Don't plan new things without finishing the previous ones.

You need to learn to find positive motivation. This is extremely important for developing such a necessary quality as hard work. If a person “works hard”, meaning only pleasant consequences for each action, this will be an excellent incentive to continue active work. One success leads to another. A person must realize that making life easier through entertainment is not as pleasant as the pleasure of doing a job well and on time. But here it is important not to get involved too much, because this is the first step towards workaholism. But this is a topic for another conversation, which will also definitely take place.

Procrastination is a psychological problem of a person, putting things off for later, as a result they remain unfulfilled. At first, this problem does not seem global, however, this is not entirely true. The syndrome of putting off important things is a habit that simply needs to be fought.

Postponing things for later is a process familiar to every person. However, if it becomes a habit and becomes a pattern of behavior, it becomes a problem and is called procrastination. Her syndrome is fraught with a certain danger.

A person who is accustomed to putting off important things for later, as a result, abandons them, which leads to degradation and the development of depression. Looking back, you can see a lot of missed opportunities. This becomes dangerous for the further realization of a person as an individual. We urgently need to take action. Otherwise, a feeling of chronic dissatisfaction with life will begin to devour you from the inside.

Don't expect to be able to stop procrastinating immediately and effortlessly. Positive results occur only if the maximum amount of effort is applied by the person himself. The habit of postponing everything until later will recede if you correctly determine its true cause and use tips and recommendations.

Where to begin?

In essence, procrastination syndrome is not a disease. However, the desire to put things off until later can provoke serious problems in human health. To prevent this from happening, it is recommended to get rid of it. Before starting the process, it is necessary to determine the type of procrastinator that a person belongs to.

Stressful procrastinator:

• Fear of achievement. Some are afraid that later this will be constantly demanded of them, some are afraid of losing friends because of this, and there are also people who consider themselves simply unworthy of success. This type of attitude should be changed to a positive one.
• Fear of failure. Getting a bad result will be more painful than doing nothing at all. Another side of this type was well formulated by Abraham Lincoln: “It is better to remain silent and appear an idiot than to speak and remove the last doubts.”
• Confrontation: “It’s impossible to force me to do something.” In this case, you need to ask yourself who will be worse off if the job is not done. Perhaps this standoff is simply protest for protest's sake. Is it worth spending your entire life aggressively asserting your personal freedom rather than contributing anything useful to it?

Relaxed procrastinator;

• Rejection of a particular type of activity and the desire to avoid it. The solution will be a new attitude - the desire to put off unpleasant work is the choice of students and uneducated people.

You cannot hide from life’s difficulties; sooner or later you will have to face them face to face. You can stop putting off unpleasant things until later by taking just seven steps. The recommendations should be applied immediately, because by putting them off for later, the person will again plunge into procrastination.

1. Keep a diary. Things require accounting, so you should make a list of things that have been put off until later and determine priorities. Use a different color marker to make personal notes - by urgency, by personal interest, by degree of importance. Put an approximate completion date next to it - you will see that the following tasks will be done tomorrow, so you shouldn’t put anything off. Advice: think over a system of rewards and punishments for yourself.
2. A large work with many components can be divided into blocks: “A big elephant needs to be eaten in parts.” Unpleasant work that requires a lot of time can be divided into time intervals: “I’ll do 15 minutes and rest.” Psychologically, it will be much easier to approach such work - it will no longer seem impossible. We recommend taking a break between stages.
3. Write down all the standard phrases used for procrastination, and choose a counterargument for each. “I can do this tomorrow” - “This should be done today, and tomorrow I will spend going to the cinema, shopping, etc.” Look for positive moments, put more positive things into your arguments, and life will no longer be joyless.
4. Don't be distracted from the main task. Focus on only one task and don't be distracted by other things. For example, when you start cleaning out your closet, focus only on cleaning and not on trying on outfits. Having completed the main task, you can do more interesting things for yourself.
5. Make a detailed plan of realistic goals, defining each as short-term or long-term. After achieving even a small of them, reward yourself for responsibility and hard work. Praise and please yourself, because you completed the task on time, without delaying it for long.
6. Look for the right motivation and personal interest, because, in the words of Calvin Kulich, “nothing in life replaces perseverance.” Come up with a positive reason and things will go much easier. For example, by doing a new project, you are approaching a salary increase.
7. If you have no idea how to approach something and do it correctly, just start doing it. Our behavior also obeys the law of inertia. This means that energy must be expended only at the beginning of any task. And then it becomes noticeably easier - the law of inertia comes into force. In the process of activity, the decision will come by itself, you will get involved and, unnoticed even for yourself, complete the task. Praise yourself! After all, you didn’t spend a lot of time setting up, preparing for execution and thinking through the sequence of actions in detail.

How to get results as quickly as possible?

Any habit is developed within 21 days. We advise you to develop a certain business routine - start business at the same hour. If you started on time, be sure to praise yourself, a little, lightly. To make it less boring, develop a personal ritual of getting involved in work. After 21 days, most likely, the habit of putting things off until later will disappear, and a new, useful one will appear in its place.

By the way, the reason for procrastination may be the desire to do the job super-perfectly. And the person begins to waste time collecting information. And you just need to get to work. According to the Pareto principle, 20% of available information already provides 80% of the information needed for work. And the rest is just a waste of time, since the missing 20% ​​can only be calculated during practical work. To reduce the time of searching and processing information, the simplest plan will do, so there is no need to complicate everything.

Give yourself permission to be imperfect and you can get the job done quickly. The best teacher is practice, its experience is priceless. Having done something once, you will do it much faster and better in the future. Learn to enjoy little things, reward yourself for starting things on time and not putting them off for later.

Even if the result doesn’t turn out exactly as you expected, reassure yourself that you did it!

Hello, dear readers!
Today I continue to answer your letters.

Hello, Doctor!! I recently came across an article on the Internet about “postponing your life for later.” That in fact this is such a “psychological illness”. This is about what is happening to me now. Years go by, and all I do is that I’m going to change and start living, so many plans, so many ideas, but I can’t start, there’s no action. I hope you can help me with advice or an explanation of why this is happening to me. Aigul, 32 years old. Ufa.

Hello, Aigul. The syndrome of “postponing life for later”, procrastination - in the language of psychology, is really a disease, but you can cure yourself of it.
According to psychologists, 15–25% of people have persistent procrastination. Moreover, according to some studies, over the past 25 years the level of procrastination among the population has increased.
To make it clear exactly how the general concept of procrastination is related to your situation, Aigul, let’s turn to the following classification.

There are five types of procrastination:
1) daily (household), i.e. putting off household chores that should be done regularly;
2) procrastination in making decisions (including minor ones);
3) neurotic, i.e. postponing vital decisions, such as choosing a profession or starting a family;
4) compulsive, in which a person combines two types of procrastination - behavioral and in decision making;
5) academic, i.e. postponing completion of educational assignments, preparation for exams, etc.
This “disease” differs from laziness in that a person still does something, albeit of little use, and more aimed at postponing important matters and important decisions “for later.”
Procrastinators can easily find compelling reasons why they procrastinate or put off solving the tasks they face. For example, they may convince themselves that they are setting their priorities correctly by not allowing work to take up a large part of their lives, or they may believe that they are better able to work under the pressure and pressure of looming deadlines. There are many reasons for procrastination, and each procrastinator justifies his slacking in his own way.
To varying degrees, the state of procrastination is inherent in most of us and to a certain level it is considered the norm. However, it becomes a big problem when it turns into a normal working state in which a person spends most of his time.

What are the origins of procrastination?
There are several approaches to explaining the causes of this phenomenon. One explanation for procrastination is provided by stress reduction theory.
Low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence, and the experience of past failures in performing a given job cause anxiety and fear in a person, especially if the results of activities will be evaluated, and even publicly. Therefore, a person seeks to avoid the stress associated with performing activities that are unpleasant, uninteresting, or overly complex and “take time.” A person begins to complete a task only when the fear of the consequences of failure to complete the task outweighs the fear of failing to complete it.
The role of personal factors. It has been shown that certain personality traits facilitate the occurrence of procrastination. For example, the presence of fear of failure and the desire to avoid it, fear of success and the prospect of becoming the object of everyone's attention (shyness), reluctance to stand out and cause the envy of others.
The lack of clarity about your main life goals and your own aspirations is another reason for postponing things “for later.” Hence - lack of energy, depression and unconscious doubt about the importance of this or that matter.
Some suffer from procrastination because they do not know how to approach difficult work (lack of resources, skills, etc.) or are afraid that they will not cope.
Lack of decision-making skills and fear of making decisions due to uncertainty about their correctness are also often the cause of procrastination.
Procrastination can be a result of perfectionism. A person does not accept an imperfect result of work and, despite the fact that all established deadlines have already passed, continues preparatory work without starting to complete the main task.

Why should you fight this?
Procrastination causes a person to feel guilty, stress and loss of productivity, it can provoke dissatisfaction among others due to failure to fulfill obligations, and it is the cause of many unrealized opportunities. The totality or combination of these consequences can cause further procrastination. Therefore, the fight against procrastination must be waged on all fronts.
The process of overcoming procrastination can be divided into three main blocks:
1) a comprehensive analysis of the manifestations, sources and consequences of your procrastination, identifying the main prerequisites that are decisive for the desire to postpone the task;
2) working with your ideas about your abilities and success, with your self-esteem and level of aspirations;
3) developing skills for adequate time management, setting and achieving goals, the ability to soberly assess the complexity of a task, the effort required to complete it, etc.

A face-to-face consultation with a psychologist will effectively help you overcome procrastination. In consultation with a specialist, the work can be performed either as part of individual therapy or in a group. The most effective techniques used by Western specialists when working with procrastinators are behavioral and cognitive therapy. These techniques include using incentives and reinforcers to induce adaptive behavior, using relaxation training in stressful situations, replacing negative beliefs about personal ineffectiveness with positive ones, and integrating the latter into behaviors that previously led to procrastination.
And a few more practical recommendations:
- To cope with any problem, the first thing you need to do is realize that it is really present.
- Change your attitude towards urgent and difficult matters. Even if they are difficult and seem impossible at first glance, it is important to believe in your strength. If the process is labor-intensive and lengthy, break it into parts (as when setting goals, big ones are broken down into small ones), and take breaks after completing each of them.
- Time planning is a skill that makes our work better and more productive; it is the basis of personal effectiveness. Organized people, through a clear work plan, minimize time loss and, consequently, procrastination.
- If there are a number of tasks that are postponed with constant regularity, then in order to cope with procrastination, try to understand what is impossible and unpleasant in these matters. By understanding the reason, perhaps you will get rid of the problem.
- To get rid of procrastination caused by this or that fear, you need to fight the cause, i.e. with fear.
- Find something that will inspire and make you happy. A surge of positive emotions will help overcome temporary procrastination.
- Train self-discipline and willpower. Start with simple and small tasks. One of these tasks could be morning exercises. Start doing it at the same time every day.
- Start with mini-habits, small steps, so that you can confidently move towards your cherished goal.