Breaking the P-P Loop

First of all, I want all who reading this to close their eyes and check whether you can relate the below event of incidents into your life.

Your phone starts ringing suddenly and your friend on the other end asks,” Hey do you know sir has uploaded an assignment?” Immediately you check the LMS for the deadline. Having full two weeks to complete the assignment brings you a sense of relief. In your mind, your map and think about billion creative ideas on how to do the assignment and achieve the highest grade in the class.  You can’t wait to start writing the assignment with those amazing ideas. But as the deadline gets closer, something changes. You want to make the assignment perfect.  So, you keep delaying the start of the process. “I have to do more research, gather more information to make it really good. I’ll get started tomorrow-I’ve got time,” you tell yourself. Finally, it’s the day before the deadline. You know you are running out of time and you only write 1/100th of the ideas you thought earlier. On the due date, you regret for letting go off a big opportunity and panic and stress for not completing the assignment as expected.”

In this short article, I am going to introduce you the P-twins who created all this trouble to you. They are perfectionism and procrastination. 

Perfectionism and Procrastination forms an infinite loop that destroys your productivity as well as mental health. Perfectionists tend to make their work 100% error less. They always criticize their work thinking that, their performances are not good and have to be much better. Procrastination is often a symptom of perfectionism. Because perfectionists fear about being unable to complete a task perfectly, they put off doing that task as long as possible. They feel that their work consists of something wrong always and they are unworthy. Also, perfectionists fear that their failures will bring about embarrassment for them. As this fear of failure and embarrassment increases, the perfectionists tend to procrastinate more. It is important to break this negative cycle of perfectionism and procrastination. One reason is that you waste your valuable time by putting off tasks that are due today for some invalid reasons. The other reason is that, this P-P cycle is the enemy of creativity and productivity. Also keep in mind that both perfectionism and procrastination can negatively affect your mental and physical health. 

So, in the next time you are given a task to complete don’t get caught to this P-P cycle and get into life. Remember, “we can’t be 100% perfect!”

Leo Ashmini Karunarathne