Written by: Michelle Hanisch

Why do we procrastinate?
Well…obviously…..because it’s fun!

Except when it isn’t because we’re feeling guilty or worried by the looming deadline of something we haven’t finished, or started. Last minute panic!

But there are actually some deeper underlying reasons. For one, there may have been a survival imperative. In cave man days, a bird in the hand probably was worth two in the bush. You could eat one bird now or potentially not eat at all.

But what about when two birds were better than one? What if you were facing a long, hard winter and food needed to be stored? Then some planning and delayed gratification would be in order.

That would require some self-regulation and that’s exactly what we need to work on if we’re prone to procrastination. In fact, this is one of the things we do work on in my Stop Procrastinating and Get Sh*t Done Program.

For us procrastinators, delaying gratification may not be our strong point. Keeping a long-term goal in mind may also be a bit of a challenge if we’re faced with boring, hard, or too-big tasks. That’s when we take the bird in the hand (feel good now) over two in the bush (feel good later).

As you can imagine, feel good now might leave us a bit hungry in the not too distant future.

Think about this. How many times have you missed out on payments because you went to the pub instead of doing invoices? How many times have you missed the boat because it was too boring and time consuming reading up on the trends in your industry?

If you’re a bird in the hand kind of person maybe you could benefit from becoming an un-procrastinator. Download my free The Beginners Guide to Procrastination: A Reverse Psychology Approach to Getting Sh*t Done if that sounds like you.