Procrastination : Making You Feel Low

Have you ever faced a situation where you want to do something productive or do even a small task but are not able to do it? You have done nothing yet you feel drained.

You are aware that you are wasting your time, maybe you would have done at least 1 task in the 1 hour you were just scrolling through your phone or staring at the wall, looking at nothing particular.

It is procrastinating. Most of you would be familiar with this term.

Then ' Avoid Procrastination'. Very easy, right, but no it's not. As if this thought didn't spring to my mind. Very cliché statement but easier said than done. It is as if someone comments that why are you crying, it just portrays that how frail you are. But you can't stop feeling something, an emotion that naturally comes to you in a certain situation. It is not that you are not willing to stop procrastinating, it's just that you are not able to or do not know how to do it. How difficult it is to understand or acknowledge this.

I am not here to talk about why do procrastinators procrastinate, solutions with do's and don'ts bullet points, and making you understand the psychology behind it.

All of this is important, but the more important question is how you identify it and undergo several emotions simultaneously and sometimes not feeling anything. The constant guilt of not working, sometimes not even wanting to do the smallest tasks, eats you up inside. When everyone around you is working, striving to achieve their goals and ambitions, working hard day and night; then this makes you loathe yourself more.

In a way, Procrastination and Creative Block are linked with each other. They are not similar. When you are not able to find any inspiration and there is this temporary inability to begin or continue something you've abandoned, there is a tendency you procrastinate. There may be many reasons you experience creative block. Creative block is more likely to affect people who are musicians, writers, performers. Maybe there is too much pressure to do something, many incomplete tasks and you don't know which to start with, self-doubt, the negative atmosphere around you, etc.

How Creative Block and Procrastination are linked?

• Negative Environment: Maybe the atmosphere you are in is not suitable for you. People's cultures, thought processes, values, and beliefs are very different from each other. Resistance from people around you because of different thought processes can gravely affect your emotions. Them not understanding you or your problem and being least understanding can create a tense environment thus blocking your creativity.

Procrastination and Creative Block both can arise from negativity around you. The lack of support, the resistant atmosphere can make you feel drained.

• Fear of being judged: Fear that you might not be able to accomplish the task as you planned to and being judged and rejected all the time can take you on a trip of self-doubt.

• Mental health problems: If you are suffering from depression, anxiety, or any other mental health problem, you tend to delay your tasks, always feeling low about yourself, facing many emotions at a time, being confused, and so on.

Barriers to inspiration may cause you to procrastinate or it can happen otherwise.

You face various emotions in the above-mentioned point, be it a guilt trip, being confused, loathing yourself, feeling disgusted, out of energy all the time. One common point in all this is that you are listening to people even if they are not helping you because you can't please all the people all the time. It doesn't mean that people you are close to are having wrong intentions, but even if their intentions are true it is just not helping you.

Identify yourself and see what's going wrong for you, what is hurting you. To meet the expectations of others, you are somehow damaging yourself and going through the cycle of guilt and blame repeatedly.