3 Common Excuses Why Women (And Men) Procrastinate

It’s pretty easy to make an excuse for not starting a task. The trick is to know when a reason is valid and when it’s a creative way to avoid taking action. Most of our procrastination feelings come from a subconscious fear or self-limiting belief.  When you take the time to explore these thoughts, you’ll find that it’s easy to overcome procrastination, and crate an action-oriented plan.

There can be several excuses why people procrastinate. Some women procrastinate without realizing that they are actually doing it, while others are  in fact fully aware but chose not to take any action to stop it.  The root cause of the “procrastination habit” comes form our self-limiting beliefs.  When these thoughts go unchecked the cause you to make “excuses” for why a project/task  can’t be completed.  Let’s find out with some of the excuses below:

Excuse 1:  “It doesn’t matter”

People often avoid tasks that don’t seem important.  Sometimes it’s not time critical.  Other times an unpleasant task doesn’t seem to relate to the long term goals.  And frequently requires you overcome a major fear.

One of the simplest remedies to this “doesn’t matter” excuse is to develop the habit of making simple decisions.  You either get busy with the compelling task or have the courage to get rid of it.  One of the best ways to overcome procrastination is to make hard decisions in your life- even if it means eliminating  things that once seemed important.

Excuse 2 “I need more information to get started

Sometimes this is a valid excuse.  We often have tasks that require extensive research before getting started.  However, I don’t think that it’s a valid excuse if you’ve doing it on a weekly basis.

At the risk of sounding snarky, the simplest solution to this excuse is to get more information.  Not knowing how to do something should never be a reason to avoid a project.  Nowadays, it’s possible to learn any skill or find someone else to do it for you.

Excuse 3  “I feel overwhelmed and have too much to do.”

We all experience those moments that we feel overwhelmed.  It seems no matter how hard we work, our to-do lists never get to-done.  Usually this problem happens to women who possess the “Superwoman mentality” where you feel personally responsible to do everything on your own.

Feeling of being overwhelmed can be eliminated by focusing on important projects and delegating or eliminating the rest.  Once you know how to identify what’s important, you’ll find it’s easy to “single-handle” each task and get things done in a consistent manner.

The reason for procrastination varies for every individual. Nobody is immune to make excuses.  No matter how successful you are, at some point you’ll come up with a reason to not take action on a project.  That’s why it’s important to form habits specifically prevent and overcome the excuse-giving mindset. .