Excuses are the bedrock of procrastination, even if they are only to yourself! If you are put in a situation where you’re unable to do what you are supposed to do, you possibly come up with a valid excuse for not doing it.
You may use the excuse that you were distracted, or felt overwhelmed, or you wanted to make it perfect, or you lost track of time, or there was no one to help you, etc. Having an excuse makes anything seem acceptable to you, but are you only fooling yourself?
Our inability to manage negative emotions results in procrastination. There are many reasons for and ways to procrastinate, but which type of procrastinator are you?
If you Google the different types of procrastinators, you will see some websites mention six, five, four, or three. And they don’t even concur as to different types. So how many types are there? Obviously, a lot!
Three types of procrastinators often documented are the perfectionist, the worrier, and the over-doer.
However, here we will discuss another three different types of procrastinators that most people will be very familiar with. According to psychology, these procrastinators are all driven by their emotions.
They each have their own reason for not wanting to do something. No doubt you will recognize other people who fit these classifications, but you may find a description of yourself as well!
These three types of procrastinators are the avoider, the optimist, and the pleasure-seeker.
The Avoider
The first type of procrastinator in this list is the avoider. Many procrastinators are avoiders. The avoider will avoid doing tasks because they start feeling uneasy. They may begin to feel overwhelmed and stressed. They are not lazy, don’t think that for a moment. They will do many tasks they enjoy, they will just avoid all the ones that don’t bring them joy. Those tasks will be pushed to the back of the list.
Avoidance is a classic sign of procrastination, but it’s not always the task that is being necessarily avoided. It’s the negative emotion associated with the task.
For example, task avoidance could include doing household chores, cleaning up the dog’s mess, having to make an important decision, or having to sit down and talk to your partner about something that’s been bothering you. Understandably, these things cause you to feel uncomfortable, so you resort to doing something else that makes you feel better.
What the avoider fails to realize is that the longer the task is being put off, the longer they agonize. This causes undue stress, guilt, and more pressure. What could have been a simple task once can evolve into a big job that is far more challenging to start and complete.
The Optimist
It’s great being an optimist, except when you are an ‘optimist procrastinator.’ The optimist procrastinator seems to be living in their own little world, where they can stretch time to suit them. They don’t feel the pressure of doing something right away. They feel that the task at hand won’t take long to do, or that there is plenty of time to get it done.
The optimist procrastinator will do things at the last minute, as they don’t feel pressure when it comes to deadlines. Time has no end for them.
There is a bright side to being an optimist procrastinator, because although you don’t feel time pressures, you are someone who can work well under pressure.
You are an active procrastinator who works gracefully and may deliberately plan to procrastinate because you feel you have enough time to accomplish a task. In other words, optimist procrastinators are aware of the cost of their actions yet willingly undertake tasks with compressed timeframes, because they believe they can handle them.
However, things can go wrong, and they have left no time for that. Contingencies are rarely allowed for. That’s the downside to this behavior.
The Pleasure-Seeker
When you consistently don’t do what you know you are supposed to be doing, but instead, choose to do something you would like to do, chances are you are a pleasure-seeker. A pleasure-seeker prioritizes seeking immediate joy and happiness and if a task doesn’t fit those criteria, it will get pushed down the list.
The pleasure-seeker may be considered the lazy procrastinator of the group. After all, they are the ones regularly not doing what should be getting done and only having fun. Right? If the pleasure-seeker doesn’t become motivated enough to act, and someone else does the task for them, that’s what earns them the reputation of being a slacker.
The consequences of constantly putting off tasks until they feel like doing them can come at the expense of the pleasure-seekers good reputation. They may not be seen as reliable or worthy of trusting with tasks.
So after reading about these types of procrastinators, was it easy to spot others in the descriptions? What about you? If so, now you can see where you can improve!
