Procrastination/plus one syndrome
Medically, a syndrome is a group of symptoms that consistently occur together
in a condition. That is, these symptoms are almost always seen together when
the medical condition is present and their presence can thus, be used to
confirm that the medical condition is present.
But this term soon became more widely used even beyond the medical concept. A
syndrome could then be seen as any given set of concurrent things such as
emotions, behavior, or actions that form an identifiable pattern. And right
about now, we are going to look at the procrastination syndrome.
This procrastination syndrome is rightly called a syndrome because it soon
forms a well identifiable pattern or habit that may become really
unproductive.
Procrastination, thus, is not one of those medical syndromes you will see in
health-related literature but its effects on human development both at home
and at work are equally deleterious. Hence, the need to talk about plus one
syndrome.
I coined this name "the plus one syndrome" from the usual birthday plus one
when people sing or say to mean that they just became a year older on their
birthday. But in this case, plus one will not be referring to some birthday
celebration when you add one to your age, rather, it will refer to a
propensity to keep delaying by adding more time or days to the time you were
supposed to pick up your task and fulfilling it.
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One great thing about us as individuals is that for every task or project we plan for, we usually set a time frame to it. In other words, we allocate some amount of time or days within which we must have completed that task or project. However, most of the time, we end up not completing them before the time frame. But why is it so? You will soon find out.
Another very common scenario of procrastination is in the areas of skill
acquisition and personal development. This procrastination is what happens
when you delay when you are expected to start learning a skill or developing a
given part of yourself. Take, for example, you want to begin learning computer
programming or how to play a musical instrument, or learning graphic
designing, or learning to drive, etc, it is quite common to find people delay
a little by adding one more day or one more week to that time.
I had a friend who wanted to learn graphic design. But whenever he felt like
jumping right into it, he would tell himself "I will start tomorrow" and of course, tomorrow never
ends. To cut the long story short, he never got to learn graphic design. One
more day became one week and it spiraled into months and years and then into
never. This becomes a pattern or syndrome when it becomes a habit that affects
every other aspect of your life.
When it comes to the attitude of people towards the execution of their tasks,
there are
two categories of people. Somewhere between this great divide lies the ability to break out of the
plus one syndrome. Some of the world's most successful people are those who
have learned to
jump right into the execution of their projects
at some point without waiting any longer.
Why Do People Exhibit The Plus One Syndrome
There are common reasons why people exhibit the plus one syndrome, a pattern
of behavior characterized by the propensity to delay or procrastinate. Here
are some of those reasons:
- Laziness
- Interest in the present pleasure
- Fear of finding it too difficult
- Inappropriate satisfaction with the current state
How Do You Know You Have The Plus One Syndrome
It's not quite so easy to know that you have the plus one syndrome. However,
there are common signs you may show that suggests that you probably have the
plus one syndrome. Here are some of those signs of the plus one syndrome:
- You always succumb to the desire to do something else instead of working
- You have many unaccomplished projects
- There are many things you wished you had done earlier
- You still find it hard to overcome your fears of beginning to do something
- You are afraid to begin
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You Always Succumb to The Desire to Do Something Else Instead of Working
There are times when you really need to do something productive or an idea
just struck you and you decide to go ahead with it. Other times, you may
have worked out plans to execute an action but you tell yourself that you
are not fully ready to execute it yet. If you keep telling yourself that you
are not ready for it, that means that you are unable to yield to your inner
desire to execute your plans.
It is normal to plan adequately first before going into the execution phase
of any of your plans, but it becomes a problem if you keep telling yourself
that you are not ready when obviously you have spent too long already.
Pleasurable activities usually catch our attention more than productive
activities. You find yourself procrastinating working for the television. It
is normal and happens to everybody but if you find yourself lagging in your
product works because of this, you need to look inwards and try to overcome
this plus one syndrome because that is what the problem is.
You Have Many Unaccomplished Projects
How many projects have you accomplished and how many have you not? A quick
survey at the number of plans you have successfully execute is a great
indicator of how much you actually procrastinate working on your
projects.
Normally, when your projects pile up to such amounts that you realize that
you need to do something about them, most people usually engage their alert
mode. In the alert mode, you find yourself putting extra efforts into the
same work you may have been ignoring prior to that time. You work for longer
than usual hours and you actually achieve more in a shorter period of time.
This is what others refer to as the "crash program" or "crash job".
Although the crash or alert mode is quite normal, the plus one syndrome
could actually be so serious that some people would still not respond to the
urge to work harder due to the load of work yet unaccomplished. If you are
one of such people, there is no doubt you may have the plus one syndrome.
There are Many Things You Wished You Had Done Earlier
I had a friend who wished he had played a musical instrument. He had
interests in musical instruments but he never had to play one. One major
reason why he was not able to satisfy his dream of being able to play an
instrument like he would say, was that he never had the opportunity. He
would then add that even now, it seems too late for him to begin learning.
But are all these claims absolutely true?
Everyone has some things they have not yet accomplished but the important
question you must ask yourself is what are you doing about them. It is
important that you jump start whatever it is. That is to say, it is better
than you are halfway than nowhere at all. But what is most important is that
you accomplish it ultimately.
Many times, you find such people or even yourself telling stories of how you
wished to begin something but you never had to do it. But they do not always
have to end at the story level,
If there are many things you wished you had accomplished and the list is
enormous, then you have to accept the diagnosis of the plus one syndrome.
The good thing is it is not an incurable disease and the solution is right
here in this post.
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You Still Find it Hard to Overcome Your Fears of Beginning to Do Something
It is normal to be afraid to start developing or learning a skill that is
rather difficult or at least, seems difficult. But people have still, found
a way to learn some of the most daunting skills and engaged in some of the
most complex tasks ever. What makes the difference then?
If you find it really hard to overcome your fears, that means you would have
many tasks and projects unaccomplished as well. And the plus one syndrome is
anchored on the need to push your plans further ahead to a later date until
you end up never accomplishing your plans.
You Do Not Understand The Importance of Delayed Gratification
Delayed gratification is a concept that refers to one's decision to endure
the present stress of doing something because one realizes that he can get
to enjoy the pleasures sometimes later. Delayed gratification is an offshoot
of self-control and self-discipline to face what is more important at the
expense of some pleasure which may not be so important at the moment.
The simple logic behind delayed gratification is rating activities according
to their scale of importance and attending to the more important before the
less important. But as easy as this concept seems, many people do not fully
understand how to apply it in their lives. For instance, being able to stop
watching the TV you've been watching all day because you need to do some
work or being able to avoid playing video games now because you can do that
later and there are some more pressing things you need to attend to at the
moment. These are practical examples but there are more out there.
You Are Too Afraid To Start
In the section about why people exhibit plus one syndrome, I listed some of
the reasons why people find it difficult to begin or start implementing their
plans or projects. Like I already mentioned in this post, everyone sometimes
experiences the fear of beginning something that looks really complex or
difficult but there has to be a way to face those fears and jump start on your
projects. I am going to give you some practical ways to handle these issues in
the next sections.
Before we look at how to overcome the plus one syndrome and achieve maximal
success in your productive life, let's see some of the important consequences
of the plus one syndrome.
Consequences of The Plus One Syndrome
It may seem like a trivial matter, especially when it means that you get to
enjoy all the time doing only the things that give you pleasure but
notoriously unproductive. The plus one syndrome is not just a phenomenon of
procrastinating alone, it is procrastination that has formed a pattern and
gradually destroying your productive life without you realizing it.
Some of the consequences are as follows:
- The feeling of regret in the things you could not do
- The habit affects everything else you do
- Getting lost and confused about life
- Behaving irritably when you see others who achieved them still
- Disappointment with yourself
The Feeling of Regret in The Things You Could Not Do
After a little while, it becomes too late to go back on your dreams, I mean
those dreams you outrightly ignored fulfilling because you were too afraid
to begin somewhere. We often have regrets about the things we could not do,
but it is easy to forget when they are not as much. However, the plus one
syndrome makes the list of things you could not achieve to be enormous and
this makes the feeling of regrets more pronounced. As a wise man once said,
it is better to attempt and fail than to regret how you never even made an
attempt.
The Habit Affects Everything Else You Do
Once this pattern has been established, it does not stop at only one area of
your life. The plus one syndrome is able to affect all systems and aspects
of your life including relationship and marriage, work and job
establishments, skills, and personal developments and career development.
You find your self procrastinating or being afraid to approach a lady that
you are interested in, or you are unable to start your business or even to
learn a particular skill or develop a talent.
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The feeling of regret about how you could not accomplish your dreams could
demoralize you to the extent that you begin to have a false negative image
about yourself, how you are incapable of doing the things you are meant to
do. This false negative image of yourself can affect all other areas of your
life, subsequent opportunities that may come your way, and how you handle
some of your future projects.
Getting Lost and Confused About Life
The more complex problems become, the more difficult it will be to solve
them. When you let things pile up, they become jumbled up and more difficult
to handle. This also happens in life too. When you fail to settle some
things about your life, execute projects when you should, or do fail to do
something you should have done earlier, everything piles up with time such
that you could become confused about life if there is no external
intervention.
When they say "a fool at 40 is a fool forever", it does not mean that
someone at 40 cannot get better or change but it does allude to the fact
that it becomes increasingly more difficult and confusing to change some
things at a more advanced age than at the earlier stage. Therefore, instead
of piling things up till later, facing them squarely at the moment would
save you a lot of stress and confusion.
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Behaving Irritably When You See Others Who Achieved Them Still
Jealousy is usually a combination of two things.- Seeing something or quality you desire with someone else
- Lack of hopefulness in yourself
Anyone can boast that they would not feel bad when they see others doing
better than them. Yeah, that is hugely true if the second condition above is
still intact. If you are still hopeful about your life, you may not really
mind how much other people succeed and how much you do not. But the grave
consequence of procrastination and the plus one syndrome is that by the time
one has become confused about life, the little hope they still had in
themselves and life is suddenly overwhelmed. Then, they resort to acting and
behaving irritably when they see other people who were able to achieve the
things they couldn't.
Disappointment With Yourself
You can only be disappointed at yourself when you become convinced that you
could have done something different from the way you did it. This is much like
the regrets about the things you could not accomplish. However, disappointment
is usually a feeling signaling that there is nothing much you can do about the
situation anymore.
If someone else is disappointed at you, it is much less bad than if you are
disappointed at yourself, at which state you realize your wrongs and you feel
bad about them. When you procrastinate too much or exhibit the plus one
syndrome, you could get disappointed at yourself at a later time when you
finally realize how stupid you were some few years back.
Solutions To The Procrastination Syndrome
People who were able to overcome the plus one syndrome or who were able to avoid procrastination from being a syndrome devised a means for handling the pressures of procrastination. Here are some things you could do to overcome procrastination and the plus one syndrome.- Be ready to face risks
- Break tasks down into smaller bits
- Simplify tasks in your mind
- Promise yourself some rewards when you meet a target
- Follow the tasks step-by-step
Be Ready to Face Risks
Risks are part of everything, they are hurdles that need to be surmounted.
You do not ignore risks, you identify and recognize them, then face them.
People are often too scared to face risks but the few who made it to the
enviable top are those who were bold enough to face their risks.
If you must take a firm hold on this plus one syndrome, you must be ready
and willing to face risks and not run away from them.
Break Tasks Down into Smaller Bits
The feeling of fear that is experienced when you are about to take on new
tasks or projects or skills can easily be surmounted when you break down
the problem into smaller bits, taking one at a time. This approach works
for almost any task or project. In order to avoid being held by the plus
one syndrome, you must learn how to strategically break your big projects
into smaller units. This could be a topic for another day but will not be
exhausted further here.
Simplify Tasks in Your Mind
Your perception of a task has a big role to play in determining the
difficulty of that task. In other words, the bigger or harder you perceive
it to be, the bigger or harder it actually becomes. Until you learn to
tell yourself that you can do it and that you have all it takes to handle
the task or project, the fear will perpetually haunt you.
I have already said it, but let me say it again that simplifying your
tasks in your mind is done by assuring and reassuring yourself that you
can do it, and that you are capable of handling them. It is a way of
silencing your fears.
Promise Yourself Some Rewards When You Meet a Target
Motivations are motivations indeed. They enhance your desire to succeed at
a given task or project. When you promised yourself some rewards, probably
one of those things that would have stolen your time, you increase your
motivation. For example, if you were supposed to watch a movie but you
realize it was time for you to do some work on your project, you could
tell yourself that when you finish your task for that day or period, you
would go on to enjoy your movies and much more.
if you are finding it hard to enter the execution phase of your plans
because you are fixed on procrastinating and the plus one syndrome, you
can promise yourself a reward for jumping right into it.
Follow the Tasks Step-by-step
The truth is that even the steps are laid down already, sometimes you
might want to skip the steps. For simple tasks and projects, you can
afford to skip steps or even follow them in the reverse order. However,
for those complex processes you actually dread, you might want to follow
the steps carefully.
From my experience with complex stuff, if you skip steps without grasping
the basics, you will end up meeting those steps you skipped in the future
staring boldly at your face.
If you do not follow the steps, you may have been able to overcome the
resistance against starting but there is still another side left. That is
the side that requires that you complete what you have started. Skipping
steps makes the whole process rather more complex because that way you do
not get the little pieces of the job that makes the big whole.
Know When to Start
If you are really serious about stopping this habit of procrastination,
otherwise called the plus one syndrome, you would definitely want to start
acting now. But here comes another question, how do you know when to
start?
There is a great need to put your plans together before you begin
execution for any of your projects. However, there is a very thin line
between when you have made sufficient plans and when you should start
execution. The truth is, if you want to get a perfectly ideal plan before
you start, you will end up wasting the entire time or even not
accomplishing your tasks at all. My experiences have proven that you can
actually get a clearer picture of what your project should look like as
you keep working on it. That is to say, the more you work on it, the
better your plans get but that does not rule out the fact that you need
some baseline planning before you begin any and every project or task.
So, I compel you to go and face your habits of procrastination and the
plus one syndrome and I adjure you to do so now. You will truly experience
the joy of fulfilling your tasks and the extra motivation that comes with
that. Testify now or later when you have seen the results.
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