Procrastination – 5 reasons we do it and 5 ways to prevent it (part 2)

#3 Fear of being stupid

You don’t know much about what your homework this week will be, but
you know it will contain a few challenges. The most important thing is
to understand the material… but what if you cannot do that? What if in
the middle of writing your blog post you realise that you do not
understand your material at all? Oh god… I might not understand
procrastination at all…
Anyway, as long as you have not started, these challenges can be
avoided. As long as you have not started and you do not know the
difficulties, you can pretend to be a smart person who always has
everything figured out.

The solution: Realise that you really are a smart person (why else
would you be here?) and that there will still be problems you will not
understand immediately. And since you will not understand them
immediately, you should get started on it as soon as possible. Give
yourself the time to process the new information and you will most
definitely be fine. You are attending university; you are smart
enough.

#2 Fear of not being perfect

As a perfectionist, I wish all my work to be perfect. As a pretty
confident and stubborn person, I think I will be able to achieve that
perfection. But as a realist, I know I will not achieve that
perfection. I know that this idea I have for a blog or book, or this
vision I have for a paper will be perfect until I start writing. Then
I will discover the flaws and I will be confronted with my
imperfections. Like not starting lets you keep pretending that you are
incredibly smart, not starting also lets you pretend that whatever you
wish to make will be perfect.

The solution: I have no idea as of yet. I think it has something to do
with accepting you are not perfect, but that is incredibly difficult
if you are as awesome as I am. A very awesome blogger said so last
Monday, so it must be true. Seriously though, nobody is perfect. The
whole point of attending university is that you are not able yet to
write without any mistakes. It is the mistakes you learn most from.
So, accept that you will make mistakes and that this is perfectly
okay.

#1 Fear of failure

I might talk big, but I am actually incredibly insecure. Besides being
a confident perfectionist, I also suffer from imposter syndrome (which
will get its own blog later, rest assured). Unless I am having a very
good day, whenever I say something or hand something in, a little
voice inside my head is saying that I am complete rubbish. If I did
not fully understand it, I am afraid I will get a bad grade because I
am saying all the wrong things. If I did fully understand everything,
I get paranoid that there must be something difficult I missed.
Basically, it is the fear of being told  that it is amazing you lasted
more than five minutes at the university. As long as you have not
started yet, at least there is nothing that can suck.

The solution: Like I said before, you are smart; you got this far. As
long as you pay attention during classes and pay at least a little bit
of effort, you will get a decent grade. If you do not, it is not the
end of the world. You, anonymous reader I know nothing about, are an
intelligent and capable (wo)man. One failure does not define you.
Realise how much you have done, be it in High School or during
university classes , and how much you have achieved to get where you
are today. Now, does one little task still look so scary?