Why Do We Procrastinate When Working From Home?

Working from home is one of the greatest things I have ever come across. I get to set my own hours, do what I want, when I want and as much as I want. Basically, there is no boss around pressing you to do your job. Wait! Do your JOB? Yes, do your job. Working from home IS a job after all so why do people procrastinate when they have no need to? Here, we will look at that phenomenon.

According to studies that have been done, we procrastinate based on five basic thinking patterns, such as:

·         Figuring you have plenty of time to complete necessary tasks.

·         Bidding on freelance jobs that you aren’t really sure you have the time to do.

·         Thinking ahead to when you might get motivated to perform the job.

·         Having the wrong mindset and believing that your quality will suffer because of it.

These thinking patterns give way to the real underlying reasons we procrastinate in our work from home situation.

1.       Commitment to doing the job in the first place. If you are not serious about doing a certain job, don’t take it or bid on it. Each task requires a specific amount of energy as well as time and emotion. This makes you feel like not starting because “you are just not into it right now”.

2.       Believe it or not, it is possible to be scared of certain jobs. Perhaps you think you bit off a bit more than you could chew. You may feel like you can’t get a handle on it, so you keep putting it off until the inevitable happens-your deadline passes and you haven’t even begun yet. Look at prospective jobs closely before you accept them.

This can fall into two distinct categories: fear of failing or fear of doing so well you are sought out for that work again.

3.       The activity is not given enough of a priority in your schedule. Maybe you don’t really WANT to do that job, but you know that somebody has to. You may even feel that YOU are the one to do it; you just don’t want to. Something else always looks better and you just cannot pass that up, so your accepted task sits waiting to be completed. If you take a job or agree to do it, you are bound to that promise.

4.       Knowledge. After you look at the job closer, you start thinking that you made a mistake, but now you are stuck. The answer? Just put it off until you absolutely HAVE to get it done. In that scenario, quality will suffer as you rush through, doing a half-cracked job in the process.

5.       Last, but certainly not least, is the fact that you simply do not want to do it. Here, you have three choices; 1) relinquish it and give up the income it would have generated, 2) sub-contract it and let somebody else do it, and 3) just get through it the best you can.