Sam graduated from a top university with a 1st honours Masters degree. He and his family had high hopes for his future. Yet, 18 months after graduation, he was still jobless and was brought to see me for treatment of depression.

It so happened Sam never managed to properly start looking for work. He struggled over 2 issues.

After graduation, he could not figure out what he really wanted to do. He did not want to start with a job he dislike but he just could not decide on a career he prefers.

More importantly, he was overwhelmed by procrastination and simply failed to get started with job-hunting. He set tasks daily to look for work, but invariably could not get them done. By the end of the day, most of these seemingly simple tasks on his to-do list were still undone. He was getting nowhere after a few months.

Time flew by quickly. As he faced daily defeats due to procrastination, his self-esteem plummeted. After a year of inner struggle, his feelings of worthlessness evolved into a full blown episode of depression.

Most of us have goals in life we want to achieve. Yet, few of us could carry them out to the fullest. The main obstacle to success is our tendency to procrastinate. The harder a task is, the likelier we will procrastinate over it.

Although there are numerous books and blog articles written on the topic, people still suffer from procrastination regardless. This is despite procrastination could be contained if you have the know-how.

Procrastination is the act of delay doing tasks you set out to do. There are always tasks we know we should be done and these could be related to work, study or self improvement. Quite often, the crucial tasks that could make a difference to the outcome are unpleasant and hard to begin. Therefore, instead of doing those important but unpleasant tasks, we tend to be distracted and spend time of irrelevant but pleasurable activities. So, instead of writing an essay due soon, one choses to get distracted and browse the internet instead.

To diagnose Procrastination, there are 5 key features that need to be met.

• I. There is a persistent failure in getting crucial tasks done.

• II. Instead of pursuing tasks that need to be done, time is wasted on irrelevant and often pleasurable activities. This is associated with a preference for short-term pleasure, rather than enduring hardship and attaining long-term goals.

• III. In the end, only a small fraction of the goals set for a certain period are achieved. The procrastination will cope by thinking of an excuse and postponing the task to another day.

• IV. Even if some of the tasks are completed, they are rushed through just before the deadline and with suboptimal quality.

• V. Feelings of uselessness, regret and frustration will arise eventually after the failure in attaining the goal becomes apparent.

I will talk more about why we procrastinate in the next blog.