I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while, related to #winewellnesswednesday, but I’ve been putting it off.
(See what I did there?)
There are obvious ways procrastination is bad for your health. You get a cough and you delay going to the doctor, or you put off an annual exam. You find a lump but you think it’s nothing, put it off, and then it’s not nothing after all and if you’d dealt with it sooner it wouldn’t have been as critical. (Ok, that last one is a pretty extreme example. Sadly, we all have heard stories about people to whom it applies.)
There are less obvious ways procrastination is bad for your health, and those are the ones I want to talk about. Procrastination can lead to stress, which can have a negative impact on both your mental and physical health. Specifically, it can impact (or cause) hypertension and exacerbate cardiovascular disease. (That’s not good, for those of you playing along at home.)
Procrastination can have multiple causes (as well as multiple effects). Are you depressed? Avoiding something out of fear? Finding it hard to just get going? Everyone copes with procrastination differently, or not at all. Sometimes the hardest thing in the world to do is to pick up the phone. Or a pen. Or the keyboard. Or…or…or…whatever the case may be. Only you can figure out what’s getting in your way and causing you to procrastinate about whatever it is and why it is you’re procrastinating.
Keep in mind that there’s more than time involved. It’s important to your mental and physical health as well.
There is also a school of thought that says some procrastination can be good for you, related to making decisions, certain critical actions, or putting off tedious tasks in favor of quality time with loved ones. I’m honestly not certain what I think of that, but it may have merit!
Sometimes, but not always, I’ll set myself a timer and sit myself down and try to do something, anything, related to the task at hand. If it works, I will occasionally work past the timer going off. If it doesn’t, when the timer goes off I’ll go do something else and then come back and try again.
What do you do when you find yourself procrastinating and how do you get past it?
Cheers! Here’s to your health!