Procrastination is characterized by delaying work on a task that requires completion. While it’s not a mental health disorder, procrastination can cause psychological distress. Frequent procrastination may negatively affect your personal or work lives. When a person delays a task or puts something off until the last minute or even past the deadline. This is one of the main problems veterans returning home from active duty are faced with.
Identifying what type of procrastination you are is the beginning step in changing your behavior. There are six types of procrastination based on the main perceived issue causing the behavior.
• Perfectionist: Has high standards and fear of not meeting expectations and puts off work because they fear they won’t do it correctly.
• Dreamer: Has big goals but no plan for success.
• Worrier: Fears change, has worst-case scenario thinking, and risk takings.
• Defier: Promise-maker with poor follow-through and many excuses or reasoning for not doing the task.
• Crisis-maker: May unintentionally or intentionally create chaos at the last minute to delay work.
• Over-doer: Has unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved and lacks priority-setting abilities.
While everyone’s reasons for procrastinating are unique, there may be a common element of fear and perfectionism motivating procrastinating behavior. This may be particularly true for our veterans. Perfectionism makes a person want to do every task flawlessly, which becomes a block to getting things done and leads to procrastination.
Procrastination is also associated with higher levels of anxiety and depression. Other negative impacts of procrastination are:
Low self-esteem
Increased stress
Poor impulse control
Procrastination may stem from many factors, including and underlying mental illness or perfectionism. People who want to stop procrastinating can do so by assessing frm where the problem arises and working to develop new coping methods.